隻有放棄世界霸權才能避免和中國的衝突

《英國衛報》（The Guardian）屬英國較為激進的報紙，但質量極高。

此文不是社評，作者John Glaser



也屬於激進人士，憤青，自然在美國不是主流。不過話說的中肯，無所謂主流不主流。這是他在《英國衛報》上的專欄：

The problem isn’t China’s rise, but rather America’s insistence on maintaining military and economic dominance right in China’s backyard

不代表美國主流，如同奧巴馬三番五次強調，“我們美國人就是第一”，更難以被美國媒體大眾和精英政要理解。

【參見】
《華爾街日報》U.S. Rebukes China Over Maritime Dispute

此文被廣泛引用。

《華爾街日報》網文Washington Playing ‘Whack-a-Mole’ in South China Sea, Says Ex-U.S. Official

此文提到的是布萊爾Dennis C. Blair，奧巴馬的前任國家情報局主任（Director of National Intelligence），因與奧巴馬意見相左而（被迫）辭職。之前布萊爾是美國太平洋戰區總司令，也是高層內人。布萊爾反對和中國衝突。

《英國衛報》2015.05.28
The US and China can avoid a collision course – if the US gives up its empire
John Glaser

The problem isn’t China’s rise, but rather America’s insistence on maintaining military and economic dominance right in China’s backyard

To avoid a violent militaristic clash with China, or another cold war rivalry, the United States should pursue a simple solution: give up its empire.

Americans fear that China’s rapid economic growth will slowly translate into a more expansive and assertive foreign policy that will inevitably result in a war with the US. Harvard Professor Graham Allison has found: “in 12 of 16 cases in the past 500 years when a rising power challenged a ruling power, the outcome was war.” Chicago University scholar John Mearsheimer has bluntly argued: “China cannot rise peacefully.”

But the apparently looming conflict between the US and China is not because of China’s rise per se, but rather because the US insists on maintaining military and economic dominance among China’s neighbors. Although Americans like to think of their massive overseas military presence as a benign force that’s inherently stabilizing, Beijing certainly doesn’t see it that way.

According to political scientists Andrew Nathan and Andrew Scobell, Beijing sees America as “the most intrusive outside actor in China’s internal affairs, the guarantor of the status quo in Taiwan, the largest naval presence in the East China and South China seas, [and] the formal or informal military ally of many of China’s neighbors.” (All of which is true.) They think that the US “seeks to curtail China’s political influence and harm China’s interests” with a “militaristic, offense-minded, expansionist, and selfish” foreign policy.

China’s regional ambitions are not uniquely pernicious or aggressive, but they do overlap with America’s ambition to be the dominant power in its own region, and in every region of the world.

Leaving aside caricatured debates about which nation should get to wave the big “Number 1” foam finger, it’s worth asking whether having 50,000 US troops permanently stationed in Japan actually serves US interests and what benefits we derive from keeping almost 30,000 US troops in South Korea and whether Americans will be any safer if the Obama administration manages to reestablish a US military presence in the Philippines to counter China’s maritime territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Many commentators say yes. Robert Kagan argues not only that US hegemony makes us safer and richer, but also that it bestows peace and prosperity on everybody else. If America doesn’t rule, goes his argument, the world becomes less free, less stable and less safe.

But a good chunk of the scholarly literature disputes these claims. “There are good theoretical and empirical reasons”, wrote political scientist Christopher Fettweis in his book Pathologies of Power, “to doubt that US hegemony is the primary cause of the current stability.” The international system, rather than cowering in obedience to American demands for peace, is far more “self-policing”, says Fettweis. A combination of economic development and the destructive power of modern militaries serves as a much more satisfying answer for why states increasingly see war as detrimental to their interests.

International relations theorist Robert Jervis has written that “the pursuit of primacy was what great power politics was all about in the past” but that, in a world of nuclear weapons with “low security threats and great common interests among the developed countries”, primacy does not have the strategic or economic benefits it once had.

Nor does US dominance reap much in the way of tangible rewards for most Americans: international relations theorist Daniel Drezner contends that “the economic benefits from military predominance alone seem, at a minimum, to have been exaggerated”; that “There is little evidence that military primacy yields appreciable geoeconomic gains”; and that, therefore, “an overreliance on military preponderance is badly misguided.”

The struggle for military and economic primacy in Asia is not really about our core national security interests; rather, it’s about preserving status, prestige and America’s neurotic image of itself. Those are pretty dumb reasons to risk war.

There are a host of reasons why the dire predictions of a coming US-China conflict may be wrong, of course. Maybe China’s economy will slow or even suffer crashes. Even if it continues to grow, the US’s economic and military advantage may remain intact for a few more decades, making China’s rise gradual and thus less dangerous.

Moreover, both countries are armed with nuclear weapons. And there’s little reason to think the mutually assured destruction paradigm that characterized the Cold War between the US and the USSR wouldn’t dominate this shift in power as well.

But why take the risk, when maintaining US primacy just isn’t that important to the safety or prosperity of Americans? Knowing that should at least make the idea of giving up empire a little easier.



《華爾街日報》2015.05.27
U.S. Rebukes China Over Maritime Dispute
Defense Secretary Ash Carter says U.S. will ‘fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows’
Gordon Lubold

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii—China has isolated itself by pursuing development of a chain of artificial islands in the South China Sea, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said, in Washington’s most forceful rebuke yet of Beijing’s attempts to assert its territorial rights in international waters.

“There should be no mistake: the United States will fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows, as we do all around the world,” Mr. Carter said at a ceremony here to recognize a change of commanders at U.S. Pacific Command.

His remarks came a day after China laid out a strategy to shift its armed forces’ focus toward maritime warfare and prevent foreign powers from “meddling” in the South China Sea.

Beijing has defended its actions as legally proper and within the scope of its sovereignty.

The U.S. wants to resolve the international dispute over the islands peacefully, Mr. Carter said, but also wants “an immediate and lasting halt” to land reclamation by China and other claimants, which include the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Taiwan.

“With its actions in the South China Sea, China is out of step with both international norms that underscore the Asia-Pacific’s security architecture,” Mr. Carter said.

The escalating rhetoric over the disputed territory has set the stage for a confrontation between senior Chinese and U.S. officials, including Mr. Carter, at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, an international security conference, this weekend.

Beijing rejected Mr. Carter’s rebuke.

“China’s determination to safeguard its own sovereignty and territorial integrity is rock-hard and unquestionable. The activities that China carries out are well within the scope of its sovereignty and are beyond reproach, said Zhu Haiquan, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in the U.S. “We urge the U.S. side to honor its commitment of not taking sides on issues relating to sovereignty, stop irresponsible and provocative words and deeds, and make no attempts to play up the tension in the region.”

The U.S. defense secretary has sought to persuade Beijing to stop its construction of the islands, which consist of submerged reefs augmented by dredged materials. China has created a total of 2,000 acres of new land mass across seven islands, according to Pentagon officials. About 1,500 acres of those islands were built since January. Satellite images of the expanding land masses show China has built an airstrip on one of the islands that is large enough for fighter jets, transport planes and surveillance aircraft, significantly enhancing Beijing’s capability to patrol the skies in the area.


此圖毫無代表性。雙方對抗，不可能隻局限於上述的武器，中國航母也屬於試驗艦，無實戰能力

While pressing his criticism of Beijing, Mr. Carter hasn’t announced a change in U.S. posture over the islands. Earlier this month, Mr. Carter asked his staff to recommend options to address the issue, including flying aircraft and sailing vessels to within 12 nautical miles of the islands to reassert the right of navigational freedom.

For natural land structures, the 12-nautical mile limit is considered restricted area. Last week, a Navy surveillance plane flew near the islands and was given a warning by Chinese officials to keep back. But the flight didn’t cross the 12-mile threshold, which would have signaled a more dramatic shift in U.S. policy.

Beijing’s determination to expand the islands, which are among a group known as the Spratlys, about 800 miles off mainland China’s shoreline, is bringing the countries of the region together “in new ways” and those countries are demanding more American engagement in the Asia-Pacific, Mr. Carter said at Wednesday’s ceremony. The U.S. has sought to put greater emphasis on the region as part of a rebalancing of strategic focus.

The Philippines contests some of China’s claims in the South China Sea, but lacks modern military equipment needed to defend its maritime territory. Vietnam, another rival claimant, has invested in advanced capabilities such as modern fighter jets, submarines and land-attack cruise missiles, all from Russia. But even after these new weapon systems are in place several years from now, Beijing would enjoy overwhelming superiority in any confrontation with Hanoi.

The same couldn’t be said for a confrontation with the U.S., however.

The People’s Liberation Army has approximately 2,100 fighter or bomber aircraft in its hangars, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. But only a few hundred of those are considered modern aircraft.

China’s only aircraft carrier—while a huge leap forward for its navy—is still seen mainly as a practice platform for a future carrier fleet. A recent Pentagon review of China’s military modernization said Beijing is “investing in capabilities designed to defeat adversary power projection and counter third-party—including U.S.—intervention during a crisis or conflict.” In practice, that means hundreds of ballistic and cruise missiles positioned near the coast to deter Japanese or American warships from coming anywhere near Chinese territory. China has a substantial submarine fleet as well, piling on more risk for enemy ships.

Beijing’s release of the military white paper came with a small courtesy: When President Barack Obama visited China last year, the two countries agreed on some “confidence-building measures” to enhance their relationship. As a result, Beijing notified Washington in advance that it would be releasing the white paper, just as the U.S. told China that the Pentagon would release its own analysis of Chinese military power earlier this month.


《華爾街日報》網文2015.05.28
Washington Playing ‘Whack-a-Mole’ in South China Sea, Says Ex-U.S. Official


Former commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, Adm. Dennis Blair, delivers a speech in Tokyo in April


Adm. Dennis Blair, a former head of the U.S. Pacific Command and Director of National Intelligence, accused the U.S. of playing “whack-a-mole” in its approach to China’s island-building in the South China Sea and called for coordinated diplomacy rather than a military response.

“I think that’s terrible,” he said of the string of recent statements from U.S. military officials on the South China Sea tensions. “We shouldn’t be leading with the aircraft carriers down there.”

Adm. Blair, who was asked to resign as Director of National Intelligence in 2010 amid a rift with the White House, has some experience of dealing with China in times of crisis.

He was U.S. Pacific Command chief in 2001 when a Chinese fighter jet collided with a U.S. spy plane, killing the Chinese pilot and forcing the U.S. aircraft to make an emergency landing on China’s southern island of Hainan. China detained the crew for 11 days.

In an interview on the sidelines of an energy conference in Beijing on Thursday, Adm. Blair said he had privately advised the U.S. government to encourage other claimants in the South China Sea to negotiate a multilateral compromise that took into account China’s position — whether or not Beijing participated in those talks. China has maintained that territorial disputes should be resolved through bilateral negotiation between the parties involved, rather than through multilateral talks.

He said the main problem would be the Spratly Islands, where China holds eight rocks and reefs and other claimants occupy dozens of islands and other features.

“The only thing I can think of there is you divide them up: Okay, Philippines you get 20, Malaysia gets 15, China gets 10,” he said of a hypothetical solution. He added that any deal would have to include “certain rules,” such as a ban on military forces and an agreement to jointly develop fishing and other resources.

The U.S. and its allies would likely back such a deal, he said.

“So then we can put whatever civilian or military actions we want to take into some sort of overall context, rather than flying an airplane here, running an aircraft carrier there, having a Shangri-La declaration there,” he said, referring to an annual regional security forum set to take place in Singapore this weekend.

“Right now we’re just playing whack-a-mole.”

He noted that some senior State Department officials had also made public statements on the issues, but added: “They’ve been counter-punching and they’ve been defensive rather than saying this is how we want the place to look like.”

Nonetheless, Adm. Blair said there is little China’s forces could do in the Spratlys to deter what the U.S. sees as free navigation in international waters.

“The Spratlys are 900 miles away from China, for God’s sake. Those things have no ability to defend themselves in any sort of military sense,” said Adm. Blair, who today serves as a director at the National Bureau of Asian Research.

He is also chairman of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA, an independent non-profit institution that seeks to enhance understanding of U.S.-Japan relations.

“If the Chinese were ever so foolish as to try to take any sort of actual military action from those islands, they’re completely indefensible militarily. Heck, the Philippines and the Vietnamese could put them out of action, much less us,” he said.



2015.05.05
我國實現T800高強度碳纖維量產 性能超日本東麗
【此文登載網站用黑色背景，沒法讀，像是腦殘。文章風格屬中國老一套，宣傳部的，沒勁】

        用小小的纖維體來做自行車鋼鐵支架？沒錯，碳纖維的“小身板”中就蘊涵著這樣的大能量。不僅如此，它還在航天工業、國防軍工等領域大顯身手，被譽為工業界的“黑色黃金”。

        然而，由於長期以來我國高性能碳纖維研發和產業化水平落後，加上國外的技術封鎖和產品禁運，相關材料需求常常陷於“無米之炊”的境地。

在此背景下，江蘇航科複合材料科技有限公司（以下簡稱航科）打出自主創新牌，生產出全球領先的T800碳纖維，率先突破國際高技術壟斷，開創了我國高技術裝備製造材料產業化新格局。

昔日之殤，今日之誌

        近日，德國寶馬公司新上市的i3電動車，用直徑僅有0.007毫米的碳纖維材料代替傳統鋼鐵製造車身，使高科技產品再次奪人眼球。

       “高性能碳纖維不僅質量輕，而且強度可以達到超高強度鋼材的13～20倍，同時還具有極佳的耐腐蝕等特點，是國防尖端技術和改造傳統產業的基礎原材料。”航科總經理王浩靜在接受《中國科學報》記者采訪時說。

        一代材料，一代裝備。王浩靜對此深有感觸。由於碳纖維在航空航天等國防工業中有重要用途，西方國家將其視為戰略性物資，對中國“禁運”，更不轉讓技術、不出售設備。

        回憶往昔，兩院資深院士師昌緒仍記得，1984年，上海碳素廠試圖引進美國特科公司碳化設備，最終被美國國防部否決；1990年，吉林化學工業公司經過談判、考察，最終購買了一些碳化設備及相應測試儀器，但經多次試車，碳化爐始終開不起來。

       “新材料中碳纖維是重中之重，我國卻一直難以有大的突破，特別是不勻率高、毛絲多，力學性能也上不去，和國外產品質量差距越拉越大，無法製備航空航天結構材料。”師昌緒在接受《中國科學報》記者采訪時說。

       “國外已經實現了碳纖維高性能化、低成本化和係列化，其製備和應用技術已頗為成熟，如民用客機B787和A350，複合材料用量已經達到50%以上。而我國不能製造高性能碳纖維，導致幾乎所有的高技術裝備無法實現其設計性能。”王浩靜對比說。

       他介紹說，當前全球高性能碳纖維生產技術仍主要集中在日本東麗、美國赫氏、德國西格裏集團等少量企業手中，其成本平均隻有傳統碳纖維材料的一半左右，占據著全球過半市場。

        同時，據《研究與市場》最新發布的《2018年全球碳纖維市場增長機遇與預測》報告，未來5年，除了傳統應用大戶航空業以外，受風力發電、離心機轉子管、電子工業等潛在應用市場的驅動，全球碳纖維市場成交額有望以每年兩位數的增長率遞增。

       “發展碳纖維技術和產業是我們的強國必由之路，影響到高端製造業、民生和國家的安全。”師昌緒說。實現強國夢，當前的麵貌必須要改變，必須重視新材料的研發、產業化與應用。

       昔日之殤成為全體航科人的最大動力。為了急國家之急，2010年2月，中科院西安光學精密機械研究所和江蘇鎮江市政府簽署戰略合作協議，成立航科公司，試圖探索出一條高新技術產業化和產業報國的新路子，實現高性能碳纖維自主創新發展。

披荊斬棘，唱響世界

       “創業三年來，上過當，受過騙，遇過挫折，公司從一片泥土地發展到現在花園式的廠房，實現T800碳纖維產品技術突破與產業化，終於風雨之後見彩虹。”談起創業曆程，王浩靜笑言。

       創業就意味著披荊斬棘。新材料研發往往是多領域高新技術的集成，碳纖維也不例外，它涉及到高分子聚合、紡織、傳動、熱工等多領域學科交叉。而國內相關基礎研究薄弱，沒有係統的標準，配套技術也幾乎都屬於原創，一切都要從頭做起，研究難度可想而知。

       “特別糟糕的是一些企業宣傳上不負責任，搞得天花亂墜，使傳統體係的研發‘成果’和顛覆性新技術碰撞、廝殺，導致我們做大量的解釋工作和驗證工作，造成時間和優勢力量的極大浪費。”王浩靜回憶說。

       盡管困難重重，但王浩靜從未言棄。二十多年來的研究經驗和取得的係列創新性成果給了他“底氣”。為了早日生產出T800碳纖維，所有技術團隊每天工作18小時，夜以繼日地討論方案，航科當年獲得了中國首屆創新創業大賽獎一等獎。

       同時，功夫不負有心人。在西安光機所趙衛所長、武文斌書記以及鎮江高新技術開發區李小平書記等領導支持下，江蘇航科創造了中國碳纖維研發和產業化速度。

        2012年，公司成立僅兩年，航科就投資2.5億元建設的國內首條T800生產線實現了穩定批量生產，打破了發達國家對高性能碳纖維研製與生產的關鍵設備與技術瓶頸的封鎖和壟斷，填補了國內高性能碳纖維製造的空白。

       “航科T800碳纖維最大特點是可以根據用戶需要進行表麵處理和上漿，完全以用戶為中心進行配套生產。”王浩靜介紹說。同時，航科已具備係列化高性能碳纖維製備技術和低成本化能力，碳纖維生產原材料和主要設備幾乎100%來自國內。

        截至目前，航科先後申請國家發明和實用新型專利80餘個，製定碳纖維生產流程測試規範42項，環保節能措施使產品成本降低30%，產品性能離散型低於5%，T800碳纖維性能達到甚至超過了日本東麗公司水平。

         麵對成果，王浩靜淡然而言：“成功的經驗談不上，我們的理念是‘態度決定一切，細節決定成敗’。不計個人得失，隻為報效祖國！”

創新為幟，再攀高峰

       作為21世紀的新材料，很多人把碳纖維看成是“改變全球現存遊戲格局”的潛力股。

        對此，王浩靜表示，盡管我國碳纖維生產較國外發展慢，但消費量與日俱增，市場需求旺盛。“未來5年，國際市場發展可能會遠遠低於國內的發展，可能會是13%與130%的差異，所以在中國碳纖維材料一定是個潛力股。”王浩靜信心滿滿地說。

        目前，航科已全麵啟動千噸級T800碳纖維生產線的建設工作，計劃2015年全麵投產。公司同時具備T700、T800和MJ係列碳纖維的供貨能力。預計到2020年，將建成千噸級T1000碳纖維生產線和百噸級MJ係列碳纖維生產線，並開展T1200和M70J等更高性能纖維以及專用複合材料的研製及產業化工作。

        同時，航科已經掌握了製約碳纖維發展的關鍵技術和設備瓶頸，實現了從工藝到設備，從性能到質量，從人員到管理等方麵的快速提升。計劃在未來10年內打造成我國碳纖維高技術成果轉化基地、領域人才培養基地和碳纖維產業化示範基地。

       “做文章、做專利不是科研的最終目標，科研的最終目標在於以最大的價值回報社會。科研人員走出去做企業，可以激發他們的激情，最大限度地釋放他們的科研潛力和能力水平。”西光所運營與產業發展出處長曹慧濤在接受本報記者采訪時說。他表示西光所將繼續為航科未來發展提供技術和智力支持。據了解，目前，西光所已建成近30家技術創新型企業。

       麵對未來，王浩靜和他的“兵”們將繼續沿著創新之路，推進我國碳纖維研發生產，並走向國際市場。他們將爭取發揮每個人的創造性、積極性和團隊作戰的統一性與協調性，側重發展管理製度的實用性，讓所有職工對公司具有自豪感和危機感。

       我們有理由相信，未來江蘇航科一定會獨樹一幟，屹立在世界碳纖維之林，為國家、地方經濟發展發揮更大的力量。


2015.03.05
裝備技術薄弱 “新材料之王”呼喚中國研發能力

      裝備技術薄弱，產品成本偏高，技術開發相對落後……全國30多家企業碳纖維總產能不及日本一家企業。
      “新材料之王”呼喚中國研發能力
      碳纖維被稱為“新材料之王”，對支撐我國製造業轉型升級、保障國防安全等具有重要作用。然而，記者近日從有關碳纖維產業發展論壇上獲悉，我國碳纖維產業近年來雖取得長足進步，但受製於研發能力低下、質量參差不齊等問題，我國企業在國際碳纖維市場上話語權微弱，處於市場壟斷地位的美、日等發達國家企業占盡優勢。與會企業界人士和專家學者急切呼籲：加大對碳纖維行業的引導和扶持力度刻不容緩。
      中國碳纖維產量僅占全球3.2%
      “由於采用了碳纖維零部件，寶馬i3的重量比世界上最暢銷的電動汽車日產聆風還輕20%。”“不隻是汽車行業，目前，碳纖維在各領域的應用都開始出現井噴現象，整個產業鏈的技術進步與降低成本，是中國這個產業成敗的關鍵……”
      1月下旬，吉林化纖集團承辦的“吉林省碳纖維產業技術創新戰略聯盟會員大會暨碳纖維產業發展論壇”在吉林市召開，與會的200餘名企業界人士和專家學者，幾乎占據了中國碳纖維應用及開發領域半壁江山。看得出，他們每個人臉上都寫滿急切的表情。
      據了解，碳纖維密度低、強度大，質量比鋁輕，強度卻高於鋼鐵，但又具備紡織纖維的柔軟可加工性，可謂“外柔內剛”，且耐腐蝕、耐高溫、耐疲勞，耐衝擊性能好，兼之熱膨脹係數小，擁有良好的導電導熱性能及電磁屏蔽性，因此被稱為“新材料之王”。
      “2014年全球碳纖維總產量約為10萬噸，主要被日、美企業所壟斷，我國實際產量隻有3200噸左右。”中國化學纖維工業協會副會長趙向東預計，2015年國內碳纖維需求量將達到1.5萬噸。
      由於現有產量遠不能滿足需求，僅去年上半年，我國碳纖維及製品的進口量便達到5513.2噸。而未來中國四大產業——大飛機項目、海上風力發電、汽車輕量化發展及高速鐵路，無疑還將帶動碳纖維需求的強勢增長。
      “如果國內碳纖維產業不抓緊時間迎頭趕上，未來中國幾大工業恐很難不受製於人。”與會人士焦急地說。
      技術薄弱、生產成本高
      “裝備技術薄弱、產品質量穩定性有待提高、應用技術開發相對落後等，都是製約中國碳纖維產業發展的瓶頸。”趙向東直言不諱。
      關於碳纖維技術，國外一直在對我國進行嚴格封鎖。20世紀60年代，中國開始自行研究，不過，我國主要產品的性能和國際先進水平仍存在差距。
      為實現“抱團”發展，2014年6月，吉林化纖集團發起成立了吉林省碳纖維產業技術創新戰略聯盟，我國30多家碳纖維企業中，有23家是該聯盟成員，此外還有10家高校與科研院所。
      據悉，依托聯盟提供的平台，吉林省東風化工有限責任公司生產的碳纖維電熱防寒馬甲，已為環衛工人配發試穿，碳纖維電熱地板產品也已完成試製；吉林西科碳纖維技術開發公司承接了北車集團高鐵所需的碳纖維複合材料技術開發工作……
      吉林化纖董事長宋德武指出，聯盟的工作雖取得了一定成績，但各成員單位間的技術封閉仍有待進一步打開，企業原始創新和技術成果轉化的腳步尚需加快。
      據悉，生產成本偏高，是我國很多企業的共性問題。這也導致盡管市場需求在不斷加大，但目前吉林省碳纖維產業聯盟內企業還沒有實現全部滿負荷生產。
      “眼下中國碳纖維企業規模還太小，全國30多家企業的總產能，都不及日本東麗一家，難以與業內國際巨頭競爭。”東華大學教授餘木火表示。
      未來重點是產業規模和產業鏈問題
      當前，不少國家都在積極布局，著力發展碳纖維產業，將其作為搶占下一輪工業和國防競爭製高點的重要支撐。以汽車行業為例，據長安汽車設計院院長曹渡介紹，碳纖維材料在車身上的應用，可大大減輕車重，而車重每減10％，便可降低6％～8％的油耗，降低5～6%的排放，並有助於提升車輛的加速與製動性能。為此，日本計劃未來5年投資20億日元，支持碳纖維原材料企業和汽車主機廠的合作，而美國能源部今明兩年將為同類項目提供2175萬美元的資金支持。
      “如果說福特創建流水線生產是汽車行業的第一次革命，那麽碳纖維+新能源可能是第二次汽車革命。作為全球汽車產銷第一大國，中國必須把握汽車未來發展的趨勢，若中國品牌汽車沒有提早布局，有可能再次被甩飛。”曹渡神情急迫。
      據了解，為發展碳纖維產業，支撐我國製造業轉型升級，2013年，工信部製定了《加快推進碳纖維行業發展行動計劃》，2014年8月，中國碳纖維及複合材料產業發展聯盟也在北京成立。
      “受製於研發能力低下、質量參差不齊等問題，我國企業在國際碳纖維市場上話語權微弱，讓一些國際碳纖維產業巨頭占盡優勢。”在當天論壇上，不少業內人士認為，中國仍需不斷加大對碳纖維行業的引導和扶持力度。
      “沒有規模不成為產業，未來重點是產業規模和產業鏈問題。”餘木火教授指出，麵對碳纖維廣闊的應用前景，應該發揮國家意誌，培養一批產業鏈企業，每個環節培育1~2家龍頭企業，並與科研院所共同建立中國研發能力，支撐產業的跨越式發展。


2014.12.19
影響中國碳纖維產業發展的關鍵因素
本文由中國石墨業協會副秘書長劉榮華推薦

碳纖維是一種性能優異的戰略性新材料，近年來，我國碳纖維產業化進程快速推進，成為少數幾個可以生產碳纖維的國家。但是發達國家重點企業壟斷了全球市場並實現了產業化，相比之下我國碳纖維產業仍然存在較大差距。總結先進國家的成功經驗，找到影響我國碳纖維行業產業發展的關鍵因素，是行業突破的前提條件。

我國碳纖維行業整體處於起步階段，關鍵技術裝備以及產品穩定性與發達國家還存在一定差距。對碳纖維行業進行深入研究，發現影響產業發展的關鍵因素，總結先進國家的成功經驗，提出適合我國碳纖維行業的發展思路和政策建議，有助於行業實現突破，對於保障國家重大工程以及國防科工的發展有著重要的戰略意義。

一、從戰略高度看待碳纖維業發展

碳纖維是一種性能優異的戰略性新材料，密度不到鋼的1/4、強度是鋼的5-7倍，並且具有耐高溫、耐腐蝕、熱膨脹係數小等特點，廣泛應用於航空航天、能源裝備、交通運輸、體育休閑等領域。碳纖維行業發展需要集成化工、紡織、冶金、材料、裝備等多領域的技術和工藝，可以有效帶動傳統產業和下遊產業的轉型升級。碳纖維行業的發展水平可以體現一個國家的工業基礎、研發實力和管理水平。

（一）戰略性新興產業發展的基礎

碳纖維是為了滿足軍事領域對隔熱、耐燒蝕、輕質高強材料的需求而開發的，是典型的軍民兩用材料，在航空航天、衛星導彈、武器裝備等領域有廣泛的應用，可以滿足先進武器裝備對材料性能指標的要求，在實現武器輕量化和節能化方麵有著重要的作用。如美國B1、B2、F22、F117等隱型戰機大量使用碳纖維材料；國產戰鬥機、神州飛船也需要高性能碳纖維複合材料製備的關鍵結構件。碳纖維是國防現代化建設不可或缺的關鍵材料之一。

按《新材料“十二五”發展規劃》統計，“十二五”期間，我國風電新增裝機6000萬千瓦以上，新能源汽車累計產銷量將超過50萬輛，大型客機等航空航天裝備的複合材料應用比重將大幅增加。碳纖維複合材料的應用是風電大型化、輕量化的必然趨勢，是新能源汽車實現減重、提高行駛裏程的關鍵，可以大幅提高大型客機的燃油經濟性。另外，碳纖維在壓力容器、建築補強、輸電電纜、高鐵設備等工業領域有很好的應用前景。

碳纖維行業的發展不僅能夠滿足國民經濟和重大工程對高性能材料的需求，還可以推動石化化工、紡織化纖等傳統行業的技術進步和轉型升級，帶動下遊的航空航天、機械設備、能源交通等行業的發展，可以推動上下遊產業的技術進步，形成上下遊產業相互促進、互相推動的格局。碳纖維及其複合材料的應用，可以提高設備、裝備的安全性，實現輕量化，提高燃油的經濟性，減少有毒有害氣體排放。

（二）日美企業產量占全球八成以上

1974年，日本東麗公司開始生產T300級和M40級碳纖維，之後美、英、德等國也相繼掌握了生產技術。碳纖維早期主要用於航空航天和導彈等軍事裝備。隨著碳纖維性能不斷提升和低成本化的發展，在工業領域的應用逐步占據主導地位。

2011年，全球聚丙烯腈基碳纖維產能約9.8萬噸，產量約6萬噸，保持了年均約18%的增長速度。日本的產能占世界57%，美國占24%。世界生產PAN基碳纖維的重點企業約10家，日本東麗、東邦、三菱、美國赫氏、卓爾泰克、氰特是碳纖維主要生產企業，產量占世界80%以上，其中日本東麗公司處於世界領先地位，獨家壟斷高端碳纖維市場。2011年全球碳纖維消費量超過5萬噸，其中工業應用約占60%，包括壓力容器、汽車部件、風電、電子材料和石油、天然氣設備等，其次航空航天約占20%，體育休閑器材約占20%。

從發展趨勢看，隨著碳纖維趨於高性能化，加之成本和價格不斷下降，民用工業用量將繼續保持快速增長，航天航空和體育休閑用量將穩定增加。據行業預測，到2015年，世界碳纖維產能將達到15萬噸/年，產量約9.5萬噸，消費量約8萬噸。跨國公司將不斷擴大產能，鞏固其壟斷地位，到2015年，日本東麗計劃將產能從目前的1.9萬噸/年增至2.7萬噸/年。新興國家的很多企業也不斷進入碳纖維領域，如土耳其阿克薩、印度凱馬奧思凱、韓國曉星、泰光和沙特沙比克等公司都加大了碳纖維產業的投資。

（三）我國產業鏈初步建立

長期以來，日、美等發達國家在碳纖維高端產品、技術裝備等方麵對我國進行封鎖或限製性管理。自上世紀60年代以來，我國對碳纖維技術進行了積極的探索，但產業化進程十分緩慢。進入新世紀以來，我國碳纖維行業取得了一係列重大突破，打破了國外的技術封鎖，建立了國產化主流技術，初步建立起技術研發、工程化研究和產業化生產的行業格局。特別是近年來，建立了國家級的研發平台，工程化技術日益成熟，千噸級工業化裝置陸續建成並投產，初步建立了從原絲、碳纖維到複合材料及下遊製品全產業鏈，為加快產業發展奠定了較好的基礎。

2012年，我國碳纖維產能約1.2萬噸，在建產能約6300噸，產量約2550噸，開工率約22%，表觀消費量約1萬噸，進口碳纖維約8600噸。我國碳纖維應用以體育休閑為主，約占60%，航空航天和工業領域的應用占比較低。我國碳纖維生產企業約26家，分布在14個省區市，江蘇、吉林、遼寧比較集中。其中，具有千噸級（以12K計）規模的企業有4家，分別是山東威海拓展、中複神鷹、江蘇恒神和中國化工。從資本構成看，碳纖維生產企業既包括央企和上市公司，又包括民企和股份公司等。從企業原來從事行業看，既包括與碳纖維生產技術密切相關的石化、化纖、紡織機械，又包括煤化工、工程塑料、冶金等。從技術來源看，碳纖維企業各具特色，包括：中石油吉化長期以自主研發為主；江蘇恒神以引進為主，既引進國外先進的設備，又注重從國內外引進人才；中國化工收購英國Courtaulds公司，部分引進原絲技術；常州中簡、河南永煤和中科院揚州中心的技術來自於中科院山西煤化所，浙江先泰的生產技術來自於中科院寧波材料所，北京化工大學同樣是行業重要的技術支撐力量。

二、碳纖維行業發展四大特征

碳纖維技術研發周期長，對穩定性要求很高。碳纖維屬於技術密集行業，研發周期長，技術壁壘高，需要集成高分子化學、紡絲工藝、高溫冶金、精細化工、複合材料等方麵的理論技術和工藝裝備，產業鏈條非常長，關鍵控製點超過3000多個，同時對穩定性有非常苛刻的要求，既要求同時生產的每根、每束性能保持一致，又要求隨著生產周期的延長，性能要保持穩定。在碳纖維發展史上，東麗花了5年的時間專門研發原絲，用了10年時間不斷穩定提升T300碳纖維的性能，1984年研發成功T800碳纖維，近年來才開始大規模生產。

重點企業壟斷全球市場並實現了產業化。美國注重原始創新，日本擅長精細化生產，在碳纖維產業發展中各具優勢。複雜的工藝流程、高昂的研發費用以及很長的研發周期，使得國際上真正具有研發和生產能力的公司屈指可數。日本東麗公司獨家壟斷高端碳纖維市場，但其他重點企業也各具特色，在原料多元化、合成體係、紡絲技術、絲束規格等方麵具備各自的比較優勢。比如，美國氰特除了可以生產PAN基碳纖維外，還可以生產高性能瀝青基碳纖維；美國卓克泰爾在更具前景的大絲束PAN基碳纖維方麵，產能處於領先地位；中國台灣台塑技術水平普通，但通過提高效率降低成本等手段，借助自身在塑料領域的優勢，迅速擴張；土耳其阿什卡與陶氏合作，充分利用其在油劑、上漿劑、樹脂、複合材料領域的技術優勢，為未來發展奠定基礎。

應用領域不斷拓展，潛在市場逐步成熟。碳纖維下遊應用技術的開發難度較高，碳纖維、樹脂、上漿劑等之間工藝參數必須係統配合，複合材料設計與成型需要一體化，下遊領域的應用開發需要較長的研發過程。同時，重點企業壟斷市場，通過國防科工和航空航天等高端市場就可以獲得巨額利潤，缺乏降低價格擴大應用市場的動力。加之研發投入高、生產成本高，碳纖維應用範圍長期局限在一些高端領域。近年來，隨著碳纖維應用成本的下降，應用領域逐步由航空航天、體育休閑等擴展到一般工業領域，風力發電、壓力容器、交通運輸、輸電電纜等領域的應用逐步成熟。為了應對這種趨勢，東麗公司將成本更低的幹噴濕法T700級碳纖維作為發展重點之一，收購了美國卓克泰爾，進入了成本更低的大絲束碳纖維領域，擴大單線產能規模以降低成本，建設了公共研發平台，不斷加強與下遊企業的合作研發。

市場和政府在行業發展中發揮了重要作用。碳纖維屬於軍民兩用、政治敏感的戰略性新材料，其早期開發具有濃厚的國家意誌。時至今日，俄羅斯依然沿用前蘇聯模式，國家主導研發和生產，國有部門負責開發研究生產製造，保障國防科工和重大工程的需求。美國和日本采取以市場為主的模式，主要依靠大企業研發和生產，同時供應民用和國防應用領域。但是碳纖維天然與國防軍工密不可分，企業的背後始終存在國家的影子。日本通過各種途徑支持本國碳纖維企業發展，將其作為十大戰略性產業之一。美國規定國防軍工所需的重要材料都必須立足於本國生產，波音可以用東麗的碳纖維，國防軍工則采用本國赫氏或氰特的碳纖維，同時對碳纖維高端產品和技術裝備出口嚴格管控。

三、加速中國碳纖維行業發展

（一）基本思路

全球碳纖維市場的基本特征是寡頭壟斷，與自由競爭的市場經濟有很大區別，同時其技術密集、軍民兩用、政治敏感的特征，使得企業行為的背後始終伴隨著國家意誌。作為發展中國家，我國碳纖維企業研發實力薄弱，資金資本積累不足，單純依靠市場和企業自身的力量，很難突破國際巨頭的壟斷。另外，從發展中國家的成功經驗來看，日本和韓國實現現代化的過程中，許多產業都經曆了政府大力推動的過程，之後隨著現代化的深入，政府又逐步轉移經濟主導權。但是政府主導行業發展的模式並不可取，計劃經濟的內在缺陷使企業對市場發展形勢不敏感，缺乏持續創新適應市場的內在動力和基礎，缺乏持續造血的能力。

我國碳纖維行業發展迅速，但仍有較大差距。近年來，我國碳纖維產業化進程快速推進，成為少數幾個可以生產碳纖維的國家。但是，與發達國家相比，我國碳纖維產業仍然存在較大差距，主要表現為：

一是產業化水平有待提高，關鍵工藝技術還須完善，原輔料及裝備水平落後，綜合的工藝技術集成能力存在差距。高強中模和高模碳纖維還沒有實現產業化，恒張力收絲裝置、高溫碳化爐、石墨化爐等大型關鍵設備不能自主製造，進口成本高並受到一定程度的限製。

二是國內部分企業經營困難，普遍存在開工率低、產量小、質量不穩定、成本高等問題，同時根據國內行業發展情況，國際大企業不斷降低出口我國市場的碳纖維價格，國內生產企業麵臨很大競爭壓力。

三是低水平重複建設較嚴重，產業集中度低，全球重點企業僅有10家，而我國已建、在建的碳纖維企業就有約26家，並且多數企業采用東麗工藝路線，沒有實現差異化發展，多數建設的是T300級碳纖維生產線，而大絲束聚丙烯腈基碳纖維和高性能瀝青基碳纖維仍然處於空白。

四是產學研用缺乏密切的協作，企業的技術實力弱。上下遊企業缺乏深度合作，應用產品標準和設計規範滯後，應用市場亟須培育和開拓。多頭管理體製，資金投入強度不足，使用分散。

我國碳纖維產業發展必須堅持“政府引導、市場主導”的發展模式，政府對重大科技攻關事項等進行引導，集中力量攻克關鍵共性技術，同時尊重市場經濟和高科技產業發展的基本規律，發揮市場配置資源的基礎性作用，產業化和市場化交由企業自主決策、自主實施。

（二）加大政策資金支持力度

切實落實《加快推進碳纖維行業發展行動計劃》的要求，發揮國家專項資金和重大工程的牽引作用，集中力量突破關鍵共性工藝和裝備，重視新技術、新工藝、新應用的研究開發，形成技術突破和核心專利。製定和完善基於國內產品的產品標準和工程設計規範，建設公共檢測和服務平台，打通上下遊產業鏈的關鍵環節。抑製低水平重複建設，規範市場秩序，推動要素向優勢企業和高端項目集中，增強行業和企業的可持續發展能力。

（三）增強企業全產業鏈競爭優勢

碳纖維生產企業不僅要注重提高產品本身的質量性能，同時要高度重視高端裝備、專用化學品、高性能樹脂以及複合材料設計開發等方麵的發展，積極與下遊企業聯合設計開發產品，主動幫助下遊企業發現需求，積極拓寬應用領域，發展量大麵廣的產品，帶動提升質量性能，降低成本，發展高端產品滿足重大工程和國防科工的需求，走軍民融合的發展道路。根據自身比較優勢，提高產業化競爭能力，逐步由提供產品向提供綜合性解決方案轉變，不斷增強全產業鏈的競爭優勢。

（四）加強產學研用合作，提高以企業為主體的創新能力

推動高校、科研院所與企業加強合作，充分利用互補資源，攻克解決生產技術難題，形成技術突破和專利，提高科研成果和專利技術的轉化效率，建立以企業為主體的創新體係。為高校和科研機構的科技人才參與企業技術創新活動創造條件，聯合培養既精通技術又熟悉行業形勢的高端複合型人才，不斷壯大企業高層次創新隊伍。

（五）推動成立產業聯盟，加強運行監測和風險預警

組織重點上下遊企業和研發機構，推動成立碳纖維產業聯盟，配合政府加強宏觀調控，密切關注國內外的發展態勢和競爭情況，及時發布行業最新態勢，實現信息在行業內共享和交流，引導行業發展。推動企業間的加強合作和資源整合，打造完整的產業鏈條，推進與國際的交流與合作。（來源：石墨邦）


2015.04.10
由碳纖維產業鏈看中國碳纖維突圍之道

      從碳纖維產業鏈來看，我國碳纖維領域上市企業有：原絲生產商奇峰化纖，原絲碳化企業中鋼吉炭和金發科技，碳纖維預浸料和複合材料生產企業大元股份和航天複合材料企業博雲新材。據美國AJR 顧問公司預測，碳纖維絲束的全球銷售額將由2011 年的16 億美元增長至2020 年的45 億美元，碳纖維增強複合材料的銷售額將從2011 年的161.1 億美元增長到2020 年的487 億美元。碳纖維的市場前景被全球材料界普遍看好，每一步的發展都備受矚目。然而，我國碳纖維上市公司幾乎全部虧損，新材料之王的光環正在消退。是什麽原因導致了我國碳纖維企業現在的困境？我國碳纖維產業又麵臨哪些挑戰，存在什麽問題？應該采取什麽樣的突圍方式？本文對此進行了研究，以期幫助我國碳纖維企業突出重圍。
      一、碳纖維產業鏈
      碳纖維是含碳量在90%以上的無機高分子纖維，具有高強度、高模量、耐高溫、耐腐蝕、耐摩擦、導熱和導電等多種優異的性能。碳纖維是國民經濟和國防建設不可或缺的戰略性新材料，在航空航天、汽車工業、風力發電、油田鑽探、碳纖維複合芯電纜、建築補強、文體休閑和醫療器械等方麵具有廣泛的應用。碳纖維產業鏈主要包括原絲、碳纖維、中間材料、複合材料和下遊應用五個環節。
      碳纖維的應用領域主要是航空航天、工業應用和體育休閑三大塊。從全球來看，碳纖維在一般工業應用需求占比達61%，航空航天約為22%，體育休閑僅17%。碳纖維國際市場被日、美企業所壟斷，近幾年，土耳其、韓國和沙特和我國等新興國家碳纖維產業正在崛起。
      二、我國碳纖維產業麵臨挑戰和存在問題
      （一）麵臨挑戰
      由於碳纖維複合材料應用領域的特殊性，國外對高性能碳纖維技術與高端工藝裝備實施壟斷封鎖，低端碳纖維產品向我國傾銷。日本等國外大型企業占據全球95%以上碳纖維市場，並利用其技術和規模優勢壓低價格，導致國內企業被迫降價。我國穩定生產一個級別的碳纖維後，國外企業的價格就大幅下降一次。例如，2010年12k的T300產品價格為24萬元/噸，2012年則下降到12萬元/噸。受國外低價傾銷和惡意競銷的影響，加上我國碳纖維企業小而散的狀態，質量尚不太穩定，而且生產成本高於進口同類產品價格，全行業呈虧損狀態。
      上遊碳纖維價格大的波動，對下遊複合材料企業成本影響很大，製約了我國碳纖維複合材料產業的健康發展。此外，隨著土耳其、韓國、俄羅斯、印度和沙特等國家碳纖維項目的陸續投產，並且隨著國內碳纖維產能的逐步釋放，碳纖維市場競爭將更加殘酷。
      （二）存在問題
      我國碳纖維行業存在自主創新能力不強、關鍵技術落後、複合材料產業薄弱和市場應用開發滯後等問題。碳纖維行業研發、生產與應用相互脫節，產業鏈不暢通是製約我國碳纖維行業健康發展的一大瓶頸。
      1、上遊碳纖維缺乏核心技術
      近年來，我國碳纖維企業由10家迅速膨脹到30家，低水平重複建設現象普遍，產業集中度低，無法與國際碳纖維企業巨頭相抗衡。上遊碳纖維企業片麵強調規模擴張，而忽視技術研發，尚未形成關鍵技術協同攻關、工藝問題共同突破的合作機製。碳纖維技術被日本、美國等專利覆蓋，我國企業缺乏核心自主知識產權的技術支撐，尚未全麵掌握完整的碳纖維核心關鍵技術。
      原絲是生產碳纖維的關鍵，而我國原絲水平落後，絕大多數碳纖維企業采用的是二甲基亞碸原絲技術，質量尚未過關，其他原絲技術發展相對滯後，加劇了技術同質化的低效競爭。我國碳纖維性能不高、產品穩定性差、生產成本居高不下，高性能纖維一些關鍵問題還沒有完全突破。此外，碳纖維設備生產技術幾乎被國外壟斷，且嚴格限製對我國出口。而我國機械製造業落後，碳化爐等關鍵設備研發滯後。國產碳化爐發熱體所使用的碳化矽最高耐受溫度僅為1400℃，不能達到大尺寸碳化爐的工藝要求。因此，提高碳纖維企業的技術水平是當務之急。
      2、中遊複合材料產業薄弱
      無論是在技術水平還是產量方麵，與國際先進水平相比，我國碳纖維複合材料都存在一定差距。日本、德國、美國等少數發達國家掌握了每平方米70克至75克標準的碳纖維預浸料生產技術，而我國還不能生產每平方米低於80克的碳纖維預浸料，高端碳纖維預浸料主要依靠進口。我國碳纖維預浸料年需求量達7000萬平方米左右，其中4000萬平方米依靠進口。碳纖維複合材料的樹脂材料以及後端的加工和設備，則完全由美國公司壟斷。我國高性能複合材料整體上尚處於起步階段，層合固化工藝及裝備還相當落後，很多先進的設備還必須依賴進口，製約了我國碳纖維複合材料的發展。
      3、下遊市場需求疲軟
      碳纖維複合材料應用對國產碳纖維的牽引效應不足，特別是工業領域用碳纖維需求不足，這嚴重製約了我國碳纖維產業的發展規模和質量。當前世界發達國家的碳纖維在航空航天、工業應用和體育休閑應用占比分別為15%、65%和20%，我國碳纖維應用目前仍集中在相對低端的體育休閑產業，航空航天、工業應用和體育休閑用品分別占比為5%、35%和60%。我國從事碳纖維複合材料製品研製和生產，以及設備製造的廠家有百餘家。其中大多是生產體育休閑用品，原因在於這些領域對碳纖維的性能要求不高，不需要長時間的材料認證和成品實驗，門檻較低。而從事航空航天等高端碳纖維複合材料研製和生產單位僅10餘家，從事纖維纏繞和拉擠成型工藝生產碳纖維複合材料的企業40餘家。
      三、我國碳纖維突圍之道
      我國碳纖維產業發展正處於關鍵時期，麵對國外行業巨頭的打壓，應積極探索適合自身發展的道路。通過實施市場保護製度，加強碳纖維生產企業間以及上下遊企業間和科研單位之間的聯係與合作，推進研發、生產、應用一體化，以碳纖維應用帶動上遊發展，推動我國碳纖維產業持續健康發展。
      （一）實施市場保護製度
      作為戰略性新興產業，碳纖維產業不應該與成熟產業保持相同的開放程度。將其納入開放的國際環境中，國外優勢企業產品的大量湧入製約了我國碳纖維產業的發展。我國享受在一些發展水平較低的戰略性部門實施一定的貿易保護的特權，因此，要積極製定戰略性新興產業市場保護製度。在我國碳纖維產業發展水平不高，也不具備世界競爭力的情況下，麵對國外行業巨頭的打壓，通過實施市場保護製度推動碳纖維等戰略性新興產業的發展。
      （二）促進產業鏈協調發展
      國外碳纖維生產企業與航空航天、汽車工業等碳纖維應用企業建立了良好的合作關係，建立了完整的碳纖維產業鏈。例如，日本碳纖維企業與美國波音公司和法國空客公司合作，在波音B787和空客A380飛機上大量使用碳纖維複合材料。上遊原絲直接影響碳纖維的質量和成本，下遊應用需求將推動碳纖維的發展，因此，要從整個產業鏈的角度來發展碳纖維產業，提高自主創新能力和開發能力，形成大型企業集團，構築從原絲、碳纖維、中間材料至複合材料的全套產業鏈，以實現利潤最大化。
      1、積極培育碳纖維生產
      建立市場導向的技術創新機製，圍繞航空航天、汽車工業、醫療器械、體育休閑等重點領域。加大技術創新扶持力度，突破和掌握關鍵核心共性技術，促進技術成果產業化。一是建立以企業為主體，高等院校和科研院所共同參與的創新體係，不斷提高企業自主創新意識，並把建設創新型產業作為戰略目標；二是突破製約碳纖維產業發展的關鍵技術和設備瓶頸。提高碳纖維原絲生產技術，發展兩種或兩種以上的碳纖維原絲製備工藝，形成多元化技術體係，為生產高性能碳纖維提供保證。積極研發高低溫碳化爐等關鍵設備，降低生產成本，提高產業化水平；三是加強與國外交流，尋找與國外發達國家合作的突破口，促進我國碳纖維產業持續健康發展；四是加強人才引進和科技合作，以多種形式吸引國內外人才，為行業健康發展提供支撐。
      2、壯大複合材料產業
      立足於服務碳纖維，開發出適合我國碳纖維的預浸料，並以預浸料帶動碳纖維的銷售。積極開發碳纖維複合材料低成本製備技術，例如RTM/RFI工藝，自動鋪放技術，纖維纏繞、拉擠成形，電子束固化等複合材料低成本製造工藝技術。開展複合材料製造技術先進化，材料高性能化、多功能化和應用擴大化研究。針對碳纖維在國防軍工和航空航天等領域對高性能碳纖維複合材料的要求，重視熱壓罐、自動鋪帶機/鋪絲機等成形應用設備的技術研發。此外，積極培育具有競爭力的骨幹企業，鼓勵以大型複合材料生產企業為龍頭，開展跨地區、跨所有製的聯合重組，培育若幹產業集聚區，提高行業競爭力。
      3、開拓下遊應用領域
      碳纖維複合材料在大型飛機、風力發電葉片、汽車部件、石油開采抽油杆、電力輸送電纜等領域的應用將推動節能減排的實現，但是由於碳纖維及其複合材料的生產成本較高而限製了其使用範圍。因此，應通過積極降低成本來開拓和培育下遊應用市場。
      針對碳纖維及其複合材料在大飛機製造、航天工程、國防軍工等高端領域應用，積極發展高性能碳纖維及其複合材料；瞄準工業領域這個巨大的市場，著力發展通用級碳纖維產品，並通過降低成本和提升產品性能來增強自身的競爭力，推進其在工業領域的應用；體育用品是碳纖維長期需求的領域，麵對普通體育用品等低價產品市場的競爭激烈，應不斷提高產品品質。在國民經濟重點領域形成巨大的碳纖維複合材料市場，建立起完整的碳纖維及其複合材料產業鏈。


2015.04.03
中國碳纖維產業突破:技術是"彎道提速"的強大引擎

【賽迪網訊】近日，全球首部3D打印電動車“Strati”在美國芝加哥2014年國際製造科技大展(IMTS)亮相。這部用碳纖維材料打造的3D打印電動汽車，從打印到組裝完成僅需5天時間，時速可達約80公裏，此款電動汽車在通過安全測試後還可實現高速公路行駛。至此，碳纖維材料再一次夯實了其在新材料應用領域中的地位。碳纖維憑借著輕質、高強、耐高溫、抗腐蝕等特點，被用於航空、導彈等國防軍工領域，同時又在風力發電、汽車零部件、壓縮氣瓶等民用領域應用廣泛，技術附加值和政治敏感型很高，極具戰略價值，一度被稱為“新材料之王”。當今的國內外碳纖維產業，國外企業領跑地位突出，技術領先優勢明顯，而中國碳纖維企業發展相對緩慢，與國外企業相比存在較大差距。

在工信部2013年10月發布的《加快推進碳纖維行業發展行動計劃》中提出，目前我國碳纖維行業存在的主要問題是：與國際先進水平相比，我國碳纖維行業技術創新能力弱、工藝裝備不完善、產品性能不穩定、生產成本高、低水平重複建設、高端品種產業化水平低、標準化建設滯後、下遊應用開發嚴重不足等諸多問題。一方麵，由於日美企業對其生產的高性能碳纖維嚴格限製對華出口，通用及碳纖維成套技術出口須出口國政府特批，因此，我國高性能碳纖維長期依賴進口，碳纖維行業供需缺口達70%。另一方麵，我國低端碳纖維產品擴張盲目，已出現了產能過剩的局麵，高端產品研發能力不足，使我國碳纖維企業盈利能力受阻。突破高端技術是縮小國際差距的重要途徑，也是我國碳纖維產業發展的關鍵。

在技術突破上，要想實現彎道提速，就要借鑒發達國家經驗。日本是全球最大的碳纖維生產國，自上世紀50年代就掌握了碳纖維的生產方法，60年代開始生產低模量聚丙烯腈基碳纖維，80年代便成功研製出高強高模T800、T1000等高性能碳纖維。日本在高性能碳纖維領域發展迅速，得益於政府政策的有力推動，也得益於其產業聯盟模式和人才培養方式。政府在政策上給予了大量人力和經費支持，使日本碳纖維行業得以更有效地集中各方資源解決共性問題；日本碳纖維產業聯盟成立較早，成員覆蓋了整個碳纖維產業鏈，通過製定上下遊合作的產品質量標準，實現了實現纖維產業低成本和高質量的技術突破；在人才培養方麵，以東麗（Toray）為例，全產業鏈的研發人員規模均衡，重視複合型人才培養，其研發團隊人員穩定，核心人員服務時間可達20年之久，並在主導發明的同時傳代新人。

在政策、產業聯盟和人才培養三方麵，我國碳纖維產業做的如何呢？

在政策上，近年來工信部及各地方政府積極發布了多項專門針對碳纖維行業發展的政策，在人才培養、資金扶持、技術推進等多方麵支持行業發展，2013年底T800級碳纖維研發生產獲中央財政八千萬元支持，2014年初，我國即實現了T800高強度碳纖維的技術突破，政策支持卓顯成效。

2010年我國成立了“碳纖維及其複合材料產業技術創新戰略聯盟”，發展至今已有18家會員企業，企業間建立了長期的戰略合作關係。2014年初，科技部批準成立了“中國碳纖維及複合材料產業發展聯盟”。聯盟涵蓋了碳纖維上下遊企業和科研院所共計42家，聯盟的重點工作是技術攻關，重點解決T300級等中低端碳纖維產品的批次穩定性和成本控製問題，加快T700、T800級等中高端纖維產品的產業化，同時，碳纖維產業聯盟成員之間要加強溝通合作，打破體製機製的束縛，深化軍民融合，引導優勢民營企業進入軍品科研生產領域。

我國科研院所和企業多年來注重人才培養和高端人才引進，例如在吉林等多個碳纖維企業集中的區域多次提出人才引進與培養工作方案，但科技人才多集中於科研院所，高端人才仍處於緊缺的局麵，這一現象在專利申請上尤為明顯。截至2012年已成功申請專利8154個，占世界專利總量的16.2%，但遠低於日本、美國等技術發達國家。專利申請人以國內高校為主，企業研發實力薄弱。另一方麵，高端人才對企業的忠誠度有待加強。我國市場機製靈活，企業人才流動速度很快，企業需要尋找合適的人才激勵方式才能有效減少人才流失。

從以上三方麵可以看出，我國雖然技術起點薄弱，但借助成熟企業的發展經驗，加上我國在研發機構數量和規模、人才團隊等優勢，研發技術已有了突破性的進展，但多項舉措仍處於實施階段。從日美等擁有高端技術國家的發展曆程和經驗推斷，中國碳纖維產業的發展需以市場為導向、產學研結合為抓手、政策支持為保障，加快授權專利由高校和科研機構向企業流動的過程，根據產業鏈特點和產品發展階段合理布局技術專利和人才投資，鼓勵外資來華投資，引進國外已有先進技術，快速實現高端碳纖維材料進口向碳纖維技術引進的轉變，從而實現彎道提速，快速追趕國際先進企業的發展步伐。



《The Atlantic》
Why the U.S. Needs to Listen to China
And why China needs to listen to the U.S. The importance of the mutual economic criticisms between two major world powers



Henry M. Paulson Jr. and Robert E. Rubin



The relationship between the United States and China involves cooperation and competition, but recently the latter has received more attention. Much of the mistrust between the two countries has its roots in geopolitical tensions—China’s assertive behavior in the East and South China Seas, for instance, or U.S. naval surveillance off China’s coasts. But economic tensions have played a large role as well.

Discussions of the U.S.-China economic relationship too often begin with a recital of each country’s grievances against the other. The usual litany of American criticisms includes China’s management of its exchange rate, subsidies that benefit state-owned enterprises, and barriers to American companies seeking to operate in China. Another prominent critique involves Chinese cyber-hacking of U.S. businesses’ intellectual property, and China’s failure to protect intellectual property more generally.

For its part, China castigates the U.S. for its irresponsible fiscal trajectory, its political opposition to Chinese investment in American companies and infrastructure, and its export-control laws, especially those restricting the export of technologies with potential military applications.

We believe it’s time to turn the typical exchange of economic critiques on its head. The two countries have largely been engaged in a dialogue of the deaf, each blaming the other for its own failings, exerting pressure on the other to accede to its demands, and too often waiting for the other to act first. In fact, it is in each country’s self-interest to meaningfully address the criticisms made by the other.

The greatest American threat to China’s economic future is the possibility that America’s economic success could come to an end; the greatest economic danger China poses to the U.S. is the chance that China’s economy fails to grow. By contrast, if each country gets its own house in order and thus succeeds economically, that should diminish economic insecurity, which generates friction, and increase confidence about the future, which fosters a constructive relationship. As former U.S. Treasury secretaries with long experience working with China, we believe each country should undertake significant reforms. Seriously considering each other’s criticisms is a good way to begin.

The united states has enormous long-term strengths, including a dynamic and entrepreneurial culture, a strong rule of law, flexible labor and capital markets, vast natural resources, and relatively favorable age demographics. But China is right to say that improving America’s long-term fiscal outlook is a prerequisite to sustainable growth. Well-structured fiscal reforms could contribute to growth and job creation now while reducing the burden of debt in the future. Some argue that the government could create jobs and increase demand in the short term through public investment in infrastructure or other sectors, while simultaneously taking steps to improve the country’s long-term fiscal trajectory. Others argue that the nation could create more well-paying jobs by reforming its tax code for individuals and corporations, reducing the distortions that undermine economic competitiveness while raising necessary revenue.

Chinese investors could help the United States speed growth now without worsening its long-term debt problem. The U.S. has vast infrastructure needs and a paucity of public capital. But byzantine regulatory and policy barriers too often discourage private investment in major projects. A more streamlined and welcoming environment for domestic and foreign investment in infrastructure projects would create jobs and boost competitiveness.

Much of the effort to attract Chinese investment—whether in infrastructure or manufacturing or agribusiness—needs to come from outside Washington. States and cities have a choice: they can continue to be passive recipients of occasional Chinese investment, or they can design more-systematic approaches to seeking Chinese capital, and the jobs and competitive advantages that accompany it. In Ohio, Michigan, and California, for example, proactive governors are attracting Chinese investment and creating high-quality jobs in sectors like auto parts and clean energy.

Chinese investment could also benefit the U.S. by facilitating exports back to China. In the industrial Midwest, for example, relatively small firms, including family businesses, play a large role in manufacturing and employment. Expansion into China could contribute to the growth of many of these firms. Chinese investors not only can inject capital into these firms; they can help them navigate Chinese markets through strategic partnerships.

Relaxing some export controls is another way to expand opportunities for U.S. firms—and address a common Chinese critique of U.S. economic policy in the bargain. The U.S. should of course restrict the export of technologies with military applications when the national-security implications are significant. But many so-called dual-use products—those with important nonmilitary applications and some military applications—are restricted unnecessarily, and this harms the workers who make those products. In some areas, such as clean energy, the U.S. can both increase exports and promote other national interests—like helping China meet environmental goals and climate-related commitments.

Just as the United States should act on Chinese criticisms, China would be better off taking American criticisms seriously. For sustained economic growth, China must de-emphasize government investment in its own infrastructure, which currently plays an outsize role in the economy, and enable private investment in services and other emerging sectors. And it must de-emphasize exports in favor of domestic-led growth, especially household consumption. These shifts can be advanced by opening the economy further to private-sector competition, including competition from U.S. companies. Doing that would force state-owned firms to compete on a level playing field, without preferential treatment, and give a boost to both the private sector—the future of the Chinese economy—and the underdeveloped service sector. The Bilateral Investment Treaty with the U.S., currently being negotiated, would help by giving Chinese reformers leverage to open their markets to competition and encourage cross-border investment, creating jobs in both countries.
Chinese investors could help the U.S. speed growth without worsening its debt problem.

The efficiency of China’s economy would likewise improve if the country reformed its financial sector, encouraging competition (and empowering Chinese consumers) by granting more private banking licenses, liberalizing interest rates on deposits, and ending preferential access to credit for state-owned firms. Those subsidies create an overabundance of cheap money that many Chinese companies depend upon. Mispriced capital impedes the evolution of China’s economy, prevents the efficient use of capital, and financially constrains some of the economy’s best performers—private companies, which are already responsible for more than 70 percent of Chinese jobs.

China also subsidizes land, energy, and resource prices, in part to support its massive industrial sector. These subsidies are a major reason China is now the dominant global player in steel, cement, and other industries, but they have also distorted the Chinese economy. Beijing has begun to liberalize many commodity prices and has pledged to make further adjustments, including to oil and natural-gas prices. China has its own motivations for doing this—for example, to conserve resources and encourage efficiency. Continued movement toward market pricing would allocate resources more rationally and improve the workings of the Chinese economy, while also eliminating a major source of economic tension between Washington and Beijing. Similarly, there have long been tensions regarding China’s use of artificially low exchange rates to subsidize exports, but currency reform is manifestly in China’s own interest. Its leadership understands this and has made real progress here.

Finally, China’s long-term success, and even much of its near-term success, depends on innovation, as its leaders have said. Innovation, in turn, requires the protection of intellectual property. China has made many commitments to protect intellectual property in the past, but too often ignores them. Ultimately, that will hurt domestic companies such as Xiaomi and Alibaba more than it will hurt Apple or Amazon. China and the U.S. would also benefit from a global regime to protect intellectual property from hacking for commercial purposes.

By addressing each other’s chief economic criticisms, China and the U.S. would simultaneously improve their own economies, remove irritants to their relationship, and foster trust. Doing so would not make geopolitical tensions disappear, but it would anchor them in a framework of mutual interest.

For all their differences, the U.S. and China face several similar internal challenges: rising health-care costs, inadequately funded social safety nets, and fiscal problems at the state or municipal level. And each faces serious income-distribution issues, though the specifics are different. The U.S. continues to face significant pressure on low- and middle-income wages, as well as widening income disparity, which runs contrary to the nation’s objective of broadly shared growth. In China, the emergence of an ultra-wealthy class is stoking resentment and unease.

The two countries also share an important external challenge: the need for a smoothly working global trading regime. As the world’s largest trading nations, they both have an interest in heading off protectionism that would damage their economies. And beyond trade, the two countries have other common goals: Middle East stability, especially with regard to Islamic extremism; climate-change mitigation; nuclear nonproliferation.

It will be much easier to make progress on these issues if America is working in complementary ways with China than if the two countries are working at cross-purposes. The international institutions that should be dealing with these challenges are far from adequate. But if the United States and China—the world’s two biggest economies—act together, that can create the kind of political and moral suasion that helps lead global action. The recent bilateral climate agreement, pledging to limit emissions in both countries, demonstrates how U.S.-China cooperation can produce meaningful results.

Arguably, the best hope for effective transnational action on many of the world’s thorniest problems lies in the cooperation of these two countries. For that to happen, perhaps the most crucial challenge will be to first look within.







舉國之力發展自主操作係統?

中國在關鍵技術還是很薄弱，許多關鍵


中國製造2025”頂級領導機構即將組建


2015.06.04
中國工程院院士倪光南：發展中國自主操作係統應傾舉國之力


近期，網上一則非洲最流行的手機來自中國的消息，引發網友熱議。雖則如此，中國工程院院士倪光南還是表達了擔憂，國產手機做的非常出色，但有一個巨大的軟肋，那就是缺乏一個自主可控的移動操作係統。昨晚在出席國產化操作係統及其產業在國防科技領域的應用論壇時，他還強調，發展中國自主操作係統應傾舉國之力，發揚兩彈一星和載人航天精神。

對於國產手機的持續火爆，倪光南認為，雖然國產手機做的非常出色，但有一個巨大的軟肋，那就是缺乏一個自主可控的移動操作係統，同時他還解釋，智能終端操作係統具有高度的壟斷性，而目前這塊被穀歌、微軟和蘋果三家壟斷。

對於中國自主操作係統，倪光南表示，要解決技術受製於人的問題，應著眼國家安全和長遠發展，召集有關部門和單位積極製定信息核心技術設備的戰略規劃。目前國內從事操作係統開發的有十幾家企業，各自為戰，不能形成合力；對知識產權風險未作充分評估。


中國工程院院士倪光南

麵對如此狀況，倪光南強調，發展中國自主操作係統應傾舉國之力，應當發揚兩彈一星和載人航天精神。加大自主創新力度，發揮我國能集中力量辦大事的優勢，傾舉國之力實現智能終端自主操作係統從無到有的突破。

此外，倪光南還認為很多企業在安卓上做定製，既是低水平重複，又做不到自主可控。中國智能終端操作係統產業聯盟正是在這種背景下成立的。聯盟接受中央網絡安全和信息化領導小組辦公室與工業和信息化部的指導，目前已有以中國電科集團為首、包括“產學研用”各界的百餘個成員單位，通過整合資源，協同創新，積極推進包括移動操作係統和桌麵操作係統在內的中國智能終端操作係統的發展。

倪光南最後還強調，操作係統是信息領域生態係統的核心，操作係統提供者可以輕易地獲取用戶的許多敏感信息。在大數據時代，數以億計的用戶信息很容易被分析處理，無論是個人層麵還是國家層麵，可以說沒有任何秘密可言。



聯邦調查局反恐記


有線電視（CNN）的報道：
Authorities: Three men attempted to join ISIS, had ambitious plans
















法庭記錄

The Sting
How the FBI Created a Terrorist
By Trevor Aaronson 03/16/2015

IN THE VIDEO, Sami Osmakac is tall and gaunt, with jutting cheekbones and a scraggly beard. He sits cross-legged on the maroon carpet of the hotel room, wearing white cotton socks and pants that rise up his legs to reveal his thin, pale ankles. An AK-47 leans against the closet door behind him. What appears to be a suicide vest is strapped to his body. In his right hand is a pistol.

“Recording,” says an unseen man behind the camera.

“This video is to all the Muslim youth and to all the Muslims worldwide,” Osmakac says, looking straight into the lens. “This is a call to the truth. It is the call to help and aid in the party of Allah … and pay him back for every sister that has been raped and every brother that has been tortured and raped.”
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Osmakac in his “martyrdom video.” (YouTube)

The recording goes on for about eight minutes. Osmakac says he’ll avenge the deaths of Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and elsewhere. He refers to Americans as kuffar, an Arabic term for nonbelievers. “Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth,” he says. “Woman for a woman, child for a child.”

Osmakac was 25 years old on January 7, 2012, when he filmed what the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice would later call a “martyrdom video.” He was also broke and struggling with mental illness.

After recording this video in a rundown Days Inn in Tampa, Florida, Osmakac prepared to deliver what he thought was a car bomb to a popular Irish bar. According to the government, Osmakac was a dangerous, lone-wolf terrorist who would have bombed the Tampa bar, then headed to a local casino where he would have taken hostages, before finally detonating his suicide vest once police arrived.

But if Osmakac was a terrorist, he was only one in his troubled mind and in the minds of ambitious federal agents. The government could not provide any evidence that he had connections to international terrorists. He didn’t have his own weapons. He didn’t even have enough money to replace the dead battery in his beat-up, green 1994 Honda Accord.

Osmakac was the target of an elaborately orchestrated FBI sting that involved a paid informant, as well as FBI agents and support staff working on the setup for more than three months. The FBI provided all of the weapons seen in Osmakac’s martyrdom video. The bureau also gave Osmakac the car bomb he allegedly planned to detonate, and even money for a taxi so he could get to where the FBI needed him to go. Osmakac was a deeply disturbed young man, according to several of the psychiatrists and psychologists who examined him before trial. He became a “terrorist” only after the FBI provided the means, opportunity and final prodding necessary to make him one.

Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the FBI has arrested dozens of young men like Osmakac in controversial counterterrorism stings. One recent case involved a rudderless 20-year-old in Cincinnati, Ohio, named Christopher Cornell, who conspired with an FBI informant — seeking “favorable treatment” for his own “criminal exposure” — in a harebrained plot to build pipe bombs and attack Capitol Hill. And just last month, on February 25, the FBI arrested and charged two Brooklyn men for plotting, with the aid of a paid informant, to travel to Syria and join the Islamic State. The likelihood that the men would have stepped foot in Syria of their own accord seems low; only after they met the informant, who helped with travel applications and other hurdles, did their planning take shape.

Informant-led sting operations are central to the FBI’s counterterrorism program. Of 08 defendants prosecuted in federal terrorism-related cases in the decade after 9/11, 243 were involved with an FBI informant, while 158 were the targets of sting operations. Of those cases, an informant or FBI undercover operative led 49 defendants in their terrorism plots, similar to the way Osmakac was led in his.

In these cases, the FBI says paid informants and undercover agents are foiling attacks before they occur. But the evidence suggests — and a recent Human Rights Watch report on the subject illustrates — that the FBI isn’t always nabbing would-be terrorists so much as setting up mentally ill or economically desperate people to commit crimes they could never have accomplished on their own.

At least in Osmakac’s case, FBI agents seem to agree with that criticism, though they never intended for that admission to become public. In the Osmakac sting, the undercover FBI agent went by the pseudonym “Amir Jones.” He’s the guy behind the camera in Osmakac’s martyrdom video. Amir, posing as a dealer who could provide weapons, wore a hidden recording device throughout the sting.

The device picked up conversations, including, apparently, back at the FBI’s Tampa Field Office, a gated compound beneath the flight path of Tampa International Airport, among agents and employees who assumed their words were private and protected. These unintentional recordings offer an exclusive look inside an FBI counterterrorism sting, and suggest that, even in the eyes of the FBI agents involved, these sting targets aren’t always the threatening figures they are made out to be.

ON JANUARY 7, 2012, after the martyrdom video was recorded, Amir and others poked fun at Osmakac and the little movie the FBI had helped him produce.

“When he was putting stuff on, he acted like he was nervous,” one of the speakers tells Amir. “He kept backing away …”

“Yeah,” Amir agrees.

“He looked nervous on the camera,” someone else adds.

“Yeah, he got excited. I think he got excited when he saw the stuff,” Amir says, referring to the weapons that were laid out on the hotel bed.

“Oh, yeah, you could tell,” yet another person chimes in. “He was all like, like a, like a six-year-old in a toy store.”

In other recorded conservations, Richard Worms, the FBI squad supervisor, describes Osmakac as a “retarded fool” who doesn’t have “a pot to piss in.” The agents talk about the prosecutors’ eagerness for a “Hollywood ending” for their sting. They refer to Osmakac’s targets as “wishy-washy,” and his terrorist ambitions as a “pipe-dream scenario.” The transcripts show FBI agents struggled to put $500 in Osmakac’s hands so he could make a down payment on the weapons — something the Justice Department insisted on to demonstrate Osmakac’s capacity for and commitment to terrorism.

“The money represents he’s willing to do it, because if we can’t show him killing, we can show him giving money,” FBI Special Agent Taylor Reed explains in one conversation.

These transcripts were never supposed to be revealed in their entirety. The government argued that their release could harm the U.S. government by revealing “law enforcement investigative strategy and methods.” U.S. Magistrate Judge Anthony E. Porcelli not only sealed the transcripts, but also placed them under a protective order.

The files, provided by a confidential source to The Intercept in partnership with the Investigative Fund, provide a rare behind-the-scenes account of an FBI counterterrorism sting, revealing how federal agents leveraged their relationship with a paid informant and plotted for months to turn the hapless Sami Osmakac into a terrorist. Neither the FBI Tampa Field Office nor FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. responded to requests from The Intercept for comment on the Osmakac case or the remarks made by FBI agents and employees about the sting.


Osmakac as a boy. (Photo courtesy of the Osmakac family)

SAMI OSMAKAC WAS 13 years old when he came to the United States with his family. Fleeing violence in Kosovo in 1992, they had first traveled to Germany, where they stayed until 2000, when they were granted entrance to the U.S. He was the youngest of eight children, and he and his older brother Avni struggled at first to adapt to a new land, a new language and a new culture.

“We came to Tampa, and at first we lived in this really bad neighborhood,” Avni recalls, wearing blue jeans, spotless white Nikes and a white New York Yankees Starter cap. “It was tough, but as we learned the language, things got easier. We adapted.”

The Osmakac family opened a popular bakery in St. Petersburg, across the bay from Tampa. They were Muslim, but they rarely attended the mosque. They didn’t usually fast during Ramadan, and Sami’s sisters did not cover their hair. Growing up, Sami wasn’t particularly drawn to Islam either, according to his family. He suffered the concerns many young men in the United States do, like getting a job and saving up for a car.

In July 2009, one of Sami’s older brothers had returned to Kosovo to get married, and just before Sami was to fly to the Balkans with his brother Avni for the wedding, he had a terrible dream. “An angel grabbed me by the face and pushed me into the hellfire,” he would later tell a psychologist. At the wedding, Avni took a photograph of Sami; he’s clean-shaven and wearing a pressed white suit. He looks happy. On the flight back from the wedding, during the final leg of the journey to Tampa, the plane Sami and his brother were on hit turbulence, losing altitude quickly. “I thought we were going to crash,” Avni remembers. Sami looked horrified.
Sami-osmakac



Osmakac in 2009. (Photo courtesy of Osmakac family)

That’s when something changed in him, according to his family and mental health expertshired by both the government and the defense. Osmakac began to isolate himself from his siblings and attend the mosque frequently. He spoke of dreams about killing himself, and chastised family members for being more concerned about this life than what comes after.

In December 2009, Osmakac met a red-bearded Muslim named Russell Dennison at a local mosque. Dennison, who was American-born, was described by Osmakac as a “revert.” Muslims believe that all people are born with an understanding of the unity of Allah, so when a non-Muslim embraces Islam, some Muslims refer to this as reversion rather than conversion. Dennison went by the chosen name Abdullah; he says in a YouTube video that after being introduced to Islam, his faith grew stronger during a prison term in Pennsylvania. Osmakac’s dress changed after he met Dennison. Whereas he had once saved his money to buy nice shoes and Starter caps, he suddenly began to dress like Dennison, according to family members — cutting his pants high at the ankle, buying cheap plastic sandals and sometimes wearing a keffiyeh on his head. He refused to cut his beard, which he struggled to grow with any thickness, and he wouldn’t wear deodorant that contained alcohol.

It wasn’t just his physical appearance that was changing; by the beginning of 2010, his family also believed he was deteriorating mentally. He’d become paranoid and delusional. His skin was pale. He was sleeping on the floor of his bedroom and complained about nightmares in which he burned in hell. He stopped working at the family bakery because they served pork products. Near the end of the year, his family repeatedly asked him to see a doctor. He rebuffed them, saying that the doctors would want to kill him. (Osmakac later told a psychiatrist he in fact “was scared to go to a mental home.”
dennison


Russell Dennison (YouTube)

Meanwhile, Osmakac’s friendship intensified with the red-bearded revert. Dennison, whose videos on YouTube are posted under the username “Chekdamize7,” frequently preached about Islam and ranted about the corruption of nonbelievers. Osmakac’s family believed that Dennison encouraged his extreme views, often recruiting him to make videos. Among their efforts was a two-part series in which they argued combatively about religion with Christians they confronted on the sidewalk.

Over the next year, Osmakac, who was without steady employment, established a reputation as a firebrand in the local Muslim community. He was kicked out of two mosques, and lashed out at local Muslim leaders in a YouTube video, calling them kuffar and infidels. In March 2011, Osmakac made his way to Turkey, in the hopes of traveling by land to Saudi Arabia, according to his brother. He’d been told that holy water from Mecca was a cure-all, Avni says — that if he drank it, the nightmares would cease. But Osmakac never got much farther than Istanbul, after encountering multiple transportation mishaps, and getting turned away at the Syrian border by officials who refused to let him cross without a visa. He quickly ran out of money, lost his will and called home for help. His family in Tampa helped purchase a plane ticket for him to return to Florida.

Osmakac would later tell several mental health professionals that he was in fact more interested in traveling to Afghanistan or Iraq to fight American troops, and perhaps even find a bride there. “If I got to Afghanistan or Iraq, someone would marry me to their daughter,” he mentioned to one psychologist. Osmakac got back in touch with Dennison in Florida, and would talk often of returning to a Muslim land so he could marry.


Osmakac’s altercation with Keffer, April 16, 2011. (YouTube)

ON APRIL 16, 2011, Osmakac was outside of a Lady Gaga concert in Tampa. Larry Keffer, a Christian street preacher with short-cropped brown hair and a thick, white beard, was outside the concert as well. Keffer was wearing a fishing hat, a green camouflage shirt and blue pants.

“Sin is a slippery slope,” Keffer yelled through a megaphone to the Lady Gaga fans as someone else recorded the demonstration.

Most of the crowd ignored Keffer. A few concertgoers taunted him. He taunted them back. A police officer directing traffic refused to acknowledge the demonstration, while Keffer ranted about Lady Gaga and the devil. Osmakac finally confronted Keffer, pointing his finger in the preacher’s face.

“You infidel, I know the Bible better than you,” Osmakac told the preacher.

“What’s your message?” Keffer replied, talking into the megaphone.

“My message is, if y’all don’t accept Islam, y’all going to hell,” Osmakac said.

The men continued to provoke each other as people milled into the concert venue.

“Go have yourself a bacon sandwich,” Keffer told Osmakac.

“You infidel,” Osmakac said. “You infidel.”

As the argument escalated, Osmakac charged one of Keffer’s fellow demonstrators and head-butted him, bloodying the man’s mouth and breaking a dental cap. He then charged Keffer. Each wrapped his arms around the other, turning and twisting, until they broke free. The police officer managing traffic charged Osmakac with battery, giving him notice to appear in court. Osmakac was later arrested after failing to show up, Avni says, and his family had to bail him out; in just a few months’ time, Osmakac’s red-bearded friend would lead him straight into an FBI trap.
Screen-Shot-2015-03-02-at-3.51.58-PM

SAMI OSMAKAC AND Russell Dennison lived in Pinellas County, across the bay from Tampa. In September 2011, Dennison told Osmakac he knew a guy who ran a Middle Eastern market in Tampa. They should go see him, Dennison suggested. To this day, Osmakac doesn’t know why Dennison suggested this, or why he agreed to accompany him on the 45-minute drive to the store, called Java Village, near the Busch Gardens theme park.

When they arrived, Dennison introduced Osmakac to the owner, Abdul Raouf Dabus, a Palestinian. Dabus had flyers in his store promoting democracy, and he and Osmakac argued about the subject, with Osmakac contending that democracy and Islam were incompatible.

“Democracy makes the forbidden legal and the legal forbidden, and that’s greater infidelity,” Osmakac would tell Dabus. “Whoever enforces it is an infidel, is a Satan. Hamas is Satan. Muslim Brotherhood is Satan … If you don’t accept that God is the only legislator, then you become a polytheist, and that’s why I’m telling you.”

Osmakac didn’t know that Dabus would become an FBI informant. His work for the government has until now been secret.

According to the government’s version of events, Osmakac asked Dabus if he had Al Qaeda flags, or black banners. Osmakac disputes this, saying he never asked anyone for Al Qaeda flags.

Whatever the truth, the sting had just begun.

    A psychologist appointed by the court later diagnosed Osmakac with schizoaffective disorder.

“He asked me if he can work a couple of hours, working and other stuff,” Dabus said in a phone interview from Gaza, where he now lives. “But it wasn’t really like a job. So basically, he was helping whenever he comes. And he got paid.” Dabus acknowledged he was paying Osmakac as the FBI was paying him.

In Tampa’s Muslim community, Dabus is well known. A former University of Mississippi math professor, Dabus was an associate of Sami Al-Arian, the University of South Florida professor who was indicted for allegedly providing material support to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, in a case prosecutors argued proved successful intelligence-gathering under the Patriot Act. Dabus had worked at the Islamic Academy of Florida, an elementary and secondary private school for Muslims that Al-Arian had helped to found in Temple Terrace, a suburb of Tampa.

Dabus was among the witnesses in the Al-Arian trial, and his testimony was damaging to the government’s case. He testified that he had known Al-Arian only to raise money for charitable purposes, not for violence. During cross-examination, Dabus told the defense that he feared that Al-Arian’s trial meant Palestinians in the United States could no longer speak openly about the occupied territories. “There is no longer any security for the dog that barks in this country,” Dabus said.

He also questioned whether Al-Arian’s indictment suggested Muslims had become a new target for the U.S. government. “Our kids, will they have a future here?” he asked. “I don’t know.”

While Al-Arian would continue to battle federal prosecutors, living under house arrest in Virginia until finally agreeing to deportation to Turkey this year, Dabus remained in Tampa, active in the local religious and business community. But he acquired a reputation during this time for running up debts. From 2005 to 2012, he faced foreclosure actions on his home and businesses, as well as breach-of-contract and small-claims cases. In fact, when Dabus met Osmakac, he was in rough financial straits, records show. In July 2011, the bank holding the mortgage on his business’s building was granted approval to sell the property through foreclosure; Dabus owed $779,447.

It’s unclear why Dabus became an FBI informant, or for how long he worked with the government. He says he was doing his civic duty in reporting Osmakac and the young man’s interest in acquiring weapons, and had not previously worked with the FBI, though an FBI affidavit in the Osmakac case described Dabus as having “provided reliable information in the past.” Money is a common motivator for FBI counterterrorism informants, who can earn $100,000 or more on a single case. Dabus estimates the FBI paid him $20,000 for his role in the Osmakac sting, though insists money did not motivate him.

On November 30, 2011, after Osmakac had begun working for Dabus, the two drove around the Tampa area together as Dabus secretly recorded their conversation for the FBI. Osmakac asked if Dabus could help him obtain guns and an explosive belt. However, transcripts suggest he was also having trouble separating reality from fantasy. “In the dream, I was shown that everywhere you go, everything you do, hush your mouth,” Osmakac says. “Don’t say nothing. So, yes, the dream is real. Allah showed me that dream for a reason. And he’s also protected me for a reason.”

A psychologist appointed by the court later diagnosed Osmakac with schizoaffective disorder.


Osmakac and undercover FBI agent “Amir Jones.” (YouTube)

ABOUT THREE WEEKS after this conversation, on instructions from the FBI, Dabus introduced Osmakac to “Amir Jones,” an undercover agent. He might be able to help Osmakac obtain weapons, Dabus told him.

“What are you looking for, so that I know if it’s something I can get you or not?” Amir asks Osmakac.

“I’m looking for, even if … one AK, at least,” Osmakac says.

“OK.”

“And maybe a couple of Uzi, ’cause they’re better to hide.”

“OK. OK.”

“If you can get the long extension like for the AK and the Uzi, the long magazines—”

“They’re called banana magazine,” Amir says. “OK.”

“And … couple of grenades, 10 grenades minimum, if you can,” Osmakac says.

“Now, and that’s it?” Amir asks.

“And a [explosive] belt.”

For all Osmakac’s talk, the FBI’s undercover videos suggest he was less a hardened terrorist and more a comic book villain. While driving around Tampa with Amir, a hidden FBI camera near the dashboard, Osmakac described a plot to bomb simultaneously the several large bridges that span Tampa Bay.

“That’s five bridges, man,” Osmakac says. “All you need is five more people …. This would crush everything, man. They would have no more food coming in. Nobody would have work. These people would commit suicide!”

Amir Jones, behind the wheel of the car, offered a hearty laugh.

BACK AMONG FEDERAL law enforcement agents, according to the secret transcripts of their private conversations, there were plenty of reasons to joke at Osmakac’s expense. FBI employees talked about how Osmakac didn’t have any money, how he thought the U.S. spy satellites were watching him, and how he had no concept of what weapons cost on the black market.

The source of their amusement was also their primary source of concern. Osmakac was, in the FBI’s own words, “a retarded fool” who didn’t have any capacity to plan and execute an attack on his own. That was a challenge for the FBI.

    “Once [the source] gives it to him, it’s his money, whether we orchestrated it or not.”
    – Special Agent Taylor Reed

“Part of the problem is they want to catch him in the act,” FBI Special Agent Steve Dixon says, referring to federal prosecutors. “The attorneys do and stuff, but the problem is you can’t show up at a nightclub with an AK-47, in the middle of a nightclub, and pretend to start shooting people, or I mean people —”

“Right,” another speaker interrupts.

“— would get killed, just a stampede, just to get away from him,” Dixon finishes.

In constructing the sting, FBI agents were in communication with prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida, the transcripts show. The prosecutors needed the FBI to show Osmakac giving Amir Jones money for the weapons. Over several conversations, the FBI agents struggled to create a situation that would allow the penniless Osmakac to hand cash to the undercover agent.

“How do we come up with enough money for them to pay for everything?” asks FBI Special Agent Taylor Reed in one recording.

“Right now, we have money issues,” Amir admits in a separate conversation.

Their advantage was that Dabus, the informant, had given Osmakac a job. If they could get Dabus to pay Osmakac, and then make sure Osmakac used his paycheck to make a payment toward the weapons, the agents could satisfy the Justice Department. “Once he gives it to him, it’s his money, whether we orchestrated it or not,” Reed says.

In conversations about this plan, FBI agents refer to Dabus as the “source,” short for confidential human source. “Jake” is FBI Special Agent Jacob Collins, who transcripts indicate worked closely with Dabus.

“The source has to tell him, ‘Hey, listen! You are gonna have to give [Amir] the three hundred bucks,’” says Richard Worms, the squad supervisor. “And that’s something Jake has the source tell him. ‘And I’ll take care of the rest … and here’s three hundred of my money for you.’ Is that something you accept?”

“That’s a feasible scenario,” Amir Jones answers.

“That’s what you’re going to do,” Worms says. “That way, the source has to be coached what to do.”

In order to avoid being vulnerable to entrapment claims, the FBI agents didn’t want their money being used to purchase their weapons in the sting. So they laundered the money through Dabus. In an interview, Dabus implicitly confirmed that arrangement, describing the $20,000 he estimates he received from the FBI as a mix of expenses and compensation.

“It also shows good intent,” Worms says of giving Osmakac the money, according to the transcripts. “He was willing to cough up almost his entire paycheck to get this thing going.”

“That does look really good,” concurs FBI Special Agent Taylor Reed.


Osmakac and Amir at a Days Inn in Tampa on January 7, 2012. (YouTube)

AMIR AND OSMAKAC arranged to meet at a Days Inn in Tampa on January 7, 2012. The FBI had the room wired with two cameras, a color one facing the headboard and a black-and-white one looking over the bed and toward the closet door, in front of which Osmakac would film his martyrdom video. Just as the FBI had orchestrated, Osmakac provided the cash to Amir as a down payment on the weapons.

The hotel surveillance video starts at 8:38 p.m. Osmakac is kneeling down on the floor and praying. He then stands and greets Amir, who has laid out the weapons on the bed. There are six grenades, a fully automatic AK-47 with magazines, a handgun and an explosive belt. Outside, a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device is assembled in the bed of Amir’s truck. None of the guns or explosives was functional, but Osmakac didn’t know that.

“You know, they saying they like three trillion in debt, they like 200 trillion in debt,” Osmakac had said, describing their plot. “And after all this money they’re spending for Homeland Security and all this, this is gonna be crushing them.”

Amir shows Osmakac the weapons one by one. He demonstrates how to reload the guns, and how to arm and throw the grenades, as Osmakac had never received weapons training.

“This one’s fully automatic,” Amir says, as Osmakac holds the AK-47.

Osmakac then slips on the suicide vest, as Amir showed him, and sits down in front of the closet, where he’ll record his video. Amir is seated in a chair facing Osmakac, holding the digital camera out in front of him.

The FBI was making a movie — all the agents needed was, in their words, a “Hollywood ending.” Osmakac would give them that final scene.

Osmakac had settled on an Irish bar, MacDinton’s, as his target. The supposed plan, which Osmakac dreamed up with Amir, was for Osmakac to detonate the bomb outside the bar, and then unleash a second attack at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Tampa, before finally detonating his explosive vest once the cops surrounded him.

But that didn’t happen. Instead, FBI agents arrested him in the hotel parking lot. He was charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction — a weapon the FBI had assembled just for him.

After the arrest, according to the sealed transcripts, the FBI agents intended to celebrate their efforts over beers.

“The case agent usually buys,” one of the FBI employees is recorded as saying. Another adds: “That’s true — the case agent usually pops for everybody.”


Osmakac loading the fake car bomb with Amir. (YouTube)

HOW OSMAKAC CAME to the attention of law enforcement in the first place is still unclear. In a December 2012 Senate floor speech, Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, cited Osmakac’s case as one of nine that demonstrated the effectiveness of surveillance under the FISA Amendments Act. Senate legal counsel later walked back those comments, saying they were misconstrued. Osmakac is among terrorism defendants who were subjected to some sort of FISA surveillance, according to court records, but whether he was under individual surveillance or identified through bulk collection is unknown. Discovery material referenced in a defense motion included a surveillance log coversheet with the description, “CT-GLOBAL EXTREMIST INSPIRED.”

If he first came onto the FBI’s radar as a result of eavesdropping, then it’s plausible that as part of the sting, the FBI manufactured another explanation for his targeting. This is a long-running, if controversial process known as “parallel construction,” which has also been used by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration when drug offenders are identified through bulk collection and then prosecuted for drug crimes.

In court records, the FBI maintained that Osmakac came to agents’ attention through Dabus. The informant reached out to the FBI after meeting Osmakac, and soon offered him a job at Java Village.

At trial starting in May 2014, Osmakac’s lawyer, George Tragos, argued that the Kosovar-American was a young man suffering from mental illness, who had been entrapped by government agents.

A difficult defense to raise, entrapment requires not only that the government create the circumstances under which a crime may be committed, but also that the defendant not be “predisposed” toward the crime’s execution. “This entire case is like a Hollywood script,” Tragos told the jury, pointing out that the central piece of evidence was that Osmakac used government money to buy government weapons.

A psychologist retained by the defense, Valerie McClain, testified that Osmakac’s psychotic episodes, along with other mental health issues, made him especially easy for the government to manipulate. “When I talked to him most recently, he was still delusional,” McClain testified. “He still believed he could become a martyr.” Six mental health professionals examined Osmakac before his trial. Two hired by the defense and two appointed by the court diagnosed Osmakac with psychotic disorder or schizoaffective disorder. The pair hired by the prosecution said Osmakac suffered from milder mental problems, including depression and difficulty adapting to U.S. culture.

Tragos wasn’t able to tell the jury that FBI agents might have agreed with McClain’s assessment of Osmakac. The transcripts of the accidentally recorded conversations among FBI agents weren’t allowed into evidence, but after the trial, District Judge Mary S. Scriven did agree to unseal a number of them, which were heavily redacted by the government before being entered into the court file.

Prosecutors relied on the undercover FBI recordings and Osmakac’s own words to convict him. They played for the jury Osmakac’s so-called martyrdom video. They showed footage of Amir slipping over Osmakac’s shoulder the strap for the AK-47. They filled the courtroom with exchange after exchange of Osmakac’s hateful and violent rhetoric. Prosecutors played up Osmakac’s most ridiculous remarks, including his desire to bomb simultaneously the bridges that cross Tampa Bay. “The most powerful thing you can see are the defendant’s own words. His intent was to commit a violent act in America,” prosecutor Sara Sweeney told the jury.

Following a six-hour deliberation, jurors convicted Osmakac of possessing an unregistered AK-47 and attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. In November 2014, he was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison.

    “I wanted to go and study the religion … hoping that Allah is gonna cure me one day from the evil inside that I used to believe. But the doctors are saying it’s not evil — it’s mental illness.”
    – Sami Osmakac

Entrapment has been argued in at least 12 trials following counterterrorism stings, and the defense has never been successful. Neither Abdul Raouf Dabus nor Russell Dennison testified in or provided depositions for Osmakac’s trial.

The government couldn’t produce Dabus, the FBI’s informant, because he had traveled to Gaza and Tel Aviv, where he says he was receiving treatment for cancer. He says his involvement with the FBI was limited to the Osmakac case — to reporting a suspicious man who was asking about Al Qaeda flags. Dabus disputes the FBI’s claim in court records that he was known to provide reliable information in the past.

“I did my job with them. I went away, and it is over,” Dabus says. “But I do not regret, and I would never regret to call again.”

Before Dabus left the country, the bank was granted approval to sell his Tampa home through foreclosure. His family owed $302,669, or about $50,000 more than the house was worth. Java Village is now shuttered. The signs are still on the outside of the building. Inside, the shelves are knocked over. Canned and dry goods litter the floor. Two dogs now guard the property.

Dennison, the red-bearded man who introduced Osmakac to Dabus, remains a mystery. He left the area shortly after Osmakac’s arrest, and emails he sent in late 2012 to a mutual friend he shared with Osmakac suggest he was fighting in Syria.

Osmakac’s family suspects much of Dennison’s story is a lie, and that he was, and likely still is, working with government agents. How else could Dennison have so conveniently delivered Osmakac to Dabus?

Confidential FBI reports on Dennison, copies of which were provided to The Intercept, do not address whether he’s been linked to a government agency. But the reports suggest the red-bearded man had a peculiar knack for becoming friendly with targets of FBI stings. After Osmakac’s arrest, FBI Special Agents Jacob Collins and Steve Dixon interviewed Dennison at Tampa International Airport, according to one report. Dennison was headed to Detroit, and from there, he said he hoped to go to Jordan to teach English. Dennison described how he was in contact with Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif, whose real name is Joseph Anthony Davis, a 36-year-old Seattle man who, like Osmakac, was troubled and financially struggling, lured by a paid informant into an FBI counterterrorism sting in June 2011. Abdul-Latif is serving 18 years for his crime.

Osmakac is now in USP Allenwood, a high-security prison north of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

“I was manipulated by [the FBI],” Osmakac says in a phone call from prison. He says he only wanted to move to a Muslim country, where he hoped to find a wife. Instead, he says, Dabus and the FBI exploited his mental problems and pushed him in different direction.

“I wanted to go and study the religion and get married, have children, just have nothing to do with this Western world,” Osmakac says. “I wanted to study Arabic and the religion in depth, hoping that Allah is gonna cure me one day from the evil inside that I used to believe. But the doctors are saying it’s not evil — it’s mental illness.”

Osmakac’s family is trying to raise money for an appeal.

“If my brother was truly part of a plot to kill people, I’d be the first one in line to condemn him,” Osmakac’s brother Avni says. “But my brother was mentally ill. We were trying to get him help. The FBI got to him first.”

This story was reported in partnership with the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.

Illustration by Jon Proctor for The Intercept


《紐約時報》
Boston Muslims Struggle to Wrest Image of Islam From Terrorists

BOSTON — Yusufi Vali was hunched over his computer at this city’s biggest mosque, where he is executive director, when the first phone call came. The police had killed a man a few miles away. Soon there were reports that the man was a Muslim who had been under investigation for terrorism.

And so the news media inquiries began. More than 100 calls came to the mosque over the next few days. Mr. Vali would explain, over and over, that the young man fatally shot after pulling a knife on the police on June 2 had only the slightest connection to the mosque: He had been hired by a security contractor to guard the mosque during the holy month of Ramadan in 2013.

No, he was not a regular at prayers. No, Mr. Vali did not recall meeting him. No, he could not shed light on any reported plan to behead a police officer, except to say that such a thing would be abhorrent.
Continue reading the main story

“It weighs on you,” Mr. Vali, a rail-slender 31-year-old Princeton graduate, said of the fallout from the latest allegations of terrorist plotting in the name of Islam. “I don’t have control over what these people do. It’s frustrating to have it put on us.”


Men gathered for Friday Prayer at the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center

To be Muslim in America today means to be held responsible, or to fear you may be, for the brutal acts of others whose notion of what Allah demands is utterly antithetical to your own. For the diverse crowd that prays at the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, where professors at nearby universities mix with freshly arrived immigrants from Somalia and Egypt, it means hearing the word “Islamic” first thing each morning in news reports on an infamous extremist group. It means a kind of implied collective responsibility, however illogical, for beheadings in Syria, executions in Iraq and bombs in Boston.

For the estimated 70,000 Muslims in the city and suburbs, there are particular pressures. For more than two years, since the bombing near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, the city has been transfixed by the tragedy’s aftermath. For more than six years, a tiny organization with an anodyne name, Americans for Peace and Tolerance, has publicly claimed in newspaper ads and web postings that Boston’s Muslim institutions are led by extremists and terrorist sympathizers.

And in some mosques, tensions have played out between conservatives, some with deep roots in the Middle East, and more liberal worshipers. The former imam at the Boston center, William Suhaib Webb, who moved to Washington last year, recalled that after a sermon expressing a tolerant view of what Islam allows, a congregant told him bluntly: “You’re not a Muslim.”

On the grounds of the Boston center, a soaring mosque with a minaret and red-brick construction meant to honor New England tradition, work is underway to turn an abandoned swimming pool into a formal Islamic-style garden. It was to be called the “Terrace Garden,” until some jaw-dropping reactions showed that some people thought they were hearing “terrorist garden.” The project was quietly renamed “Paradise Garden.”

News arrived recently that a 57-year-old man in Iowa had been arrested after posting obscene and threatening notes, one including a photograph of a rifle, on the mosque’s Facebook page. Then people began to stop by the office to show Mr. Vali fliers someone had slid under the doors of neighboring houses in the Roxbury neighborhood, citing the Americans for Peace and Tolerance claims and denouncing the mosque for “extremist leadership.”

Mr. Vali, who is close to several local rabbis and ministers and whose only evident fanaticism is for the Kansas City Royals, took to the public address system before Friday Prayer to call on congregants to ignore the bait. “Let’s kill them with kindness,” he said of the mosque’s critics.

He said he and his staff, who are guiding a search for a new imam, were determined not to be distracted from the mosque’s mission — to build a home for a distinctly American Islam, one that models community service, tolerance and compassion.

The Obama administration, worried about the recruiting of young Americans by Islamic State extremists, chose Boston last fall as one of three cities for a Countering Violent Extremism pilot program. The idea is to brainstorm ways to combat recruitment by all militants, including antigovernment groups and white supremacists. But the plan has divided Muslims in Boston and the other two cities, Minneapolis and Los Angeles.

Mr. Vali’s mosque is among those that have opted out of the federal program, saying that however well intentioned it is, they believe it will further stigmatize Muslims.

“There is obviously an ideology that exists that’s horrific,” Mr. Vali said. But he said he had not encountered violent militancy in his congregation and believed it would be a mistake “to gear everything around extremism.”

Rather than lecturing young people about terrorism, he said, he wants them learning genuine Islamic principles in a new youth program and in joint projects with churches and synagogues.

Some Muslim activists have decided to go along with the federal effort. Nabeel Khudairi, 53, an optometrist in the Boston suburb of Norwood, is already creating a program to encourage young Muslims to look for genuine heroes and convince them that they “should not go to YouTube University and not listen to Imam Google.”


Hafsa Salim, a human resources manager, waited outside the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center for a shuttle to take her youngest daughter Nura to school

Participating in the federal project “is getting on a ship before it sails,” Mr. Khudairi said. “Otherwise you’re standing on shore, watching it go.”

Unlike Minneapolis, Boston has not experienced the departure of dozens of young people for militant groups like the Shabab, in Somalia, and the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. But over the years, a growing list of Muslim extremists and terrorists has emerged from the city.

Most notorious are the Tsarnaev brothers, who committed the marathon bombing. But there are others:

■ Ahmad Abousamra, 33 if he is still alive, grew up in suburban Boston. His father was an endocrinologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and president of the Islamic Center of New England. He fled to Syria in 2007 after coming under F.B.I. scrutiny and last year joined the Islamic State’s prolific English-language social media operation in Syria, officials believe. In late May, the Iraqi military announced that he had been killed in an airstrike; American officials have not confirmed his death.

■ Tarek Mehanna, another suburbanite in his early 30s, who was charged in 2009 with Mr. Abousamra but did not flee. He was convicted of supporting Al Qaeda and other charges, and is serving a 17-year federal sentence.

■ Rezwan Ferdaus, 29, grew up in the outer suburb of Ashland and earned a physics degree at Northeastern University. He was sentenced in 2012 to 17 years for plotting to fly explosives-laden model planes into the Capitol and the Pentagon and other crimes.

■ Aafia Siddiqui, 43, who earned a Ph.D. in neuroscience at Brandeis and became an outspoken Muslim activist. She later joined Al Qaeda and in 2008, in custody in Afghanistan, was accused of shooting at American soldiers. She was sentenced in 2010 to 86 years.

■ Abdurahman Alamoudi, 63, a founder of the Islamic Society of Boston, parent organization to Mr. Vali’s mosque, who in 2004 was sentenced to 23 years for joining a bizarre Libyan plot to kill the Saudi crown prince and other charges.

They are among more than a dozen people featured in a rogues’ gallery of former Bostonians featured in advertisements and online writings of Americans for Peace and Tolerance. The group’s founder is Charles Jacobs, 71, a former business consultant who spent years combating contemporary slavery in Africa before focusing on what he sees as a new form of anti-Semitism, fueled by Islamic extremism and hostility to Israel.

The accumulation of Boston malefactors makes for a disturbing list, especially if it is now updated with Usaamah Rahim, the man killed by the police this month, and two other men who were charged Friday with plotting with him and supporting the Islamic State. The Boston Globe was prompted last week to ask in a headline, “Are Boston terrorism cases a trend?”

Mr. Jacobs blames what he believes to be the radical leadership of area mosques, including the Islamic Society of Boston. He points to the fact that devotees of the Muslim Brotherhood, the conservative Islamist organization with branches and allies across the Middle East, were involved in founding the society more than three decades ago. The Muslim American Society, whose Boston branch operates Mr. Vali’s mosque, has been accused of links to the Brotherhood; it insists any ties are historical and have no relevance.

“We think and say and write that the vast majority of Muslims in Boston and America are moderates who would never do anyone any harm,” Mr. Jacobs said. “We think the I.S.B. leadership are hiding behind the general Muslim population.”


Abdul Cader Asmal, left, a retired physician, and Nabeel Khudairi, an optometrist, outside  the Islamic Center of New England in Sharon, Mass. Dr. Asmal said that Islam must find a way to “excommunicate” extremists

His assertions have been rejected by Boston’s leading rabbis and the United States attorney, Carmen Ortiz, who said she found the group’s claims “incredibly racist and unfair.”

A closer look at extremists who have come from Boston finds little evidence that they were radicalized at local mosques. For example, the authorities believe the Chechen brothers responsible for the bombing at the marathon got their ideas largely online; the older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was thrown out of the Islamic Society of Boston’s Cambridge mosque after a strident outburst.

Still, to talk privately with a range of Boston-area Muslims is to hear a more subtle story about the battle over Islamic ideology. One Pakistani-American, who did not want to be identified for fear of becoming a target of anger, said he believed Muslim Brotherhood loyalists in Boston still met secretly and had a pernicious influence on some young people. But he said he did not believe these “hard-liners,” as he called them, supported terrorism.

Talal Eid, 63, a liberal imam who was ousted from his longtime position at a suburban Boston mosque in a factional fight in 2005, said he believed the city’s mosques should operate more democratically. But he said the ideological tensions had no relationship to violence.

“Muslims all over are very good people, working hard, living their lives,” he said. “In Boston, when you talk about terrorists, you can count them on the fingers of one hand. It’s not even one in 10,000.”

But while the numbers may be small, the consequences for American Muslims of each reported plot or act of religiously motivated violence are incalculable.

Some Boston Muslims believe Islam itself faces a grave, perhaps existential danger from the association with terror.

Mr. Webb, the imam who served at Mr. Vali’s mosque from 2010 to 2014, has been denounced on the Internet for his liberal views. A onetime gang member and hip-hop D.J. from a Christian family, he said he himself had espoused deeply conservative views after converting to Islam and changed only gradually.

After the Islamic State beheadings of journalists last year, Mr. Webb delivered a striking sermon. “In America, no religious community has been beaten up or slapped around in the last 13 years like us,” he said.

But he added: “Within our ranks, we have people who openly say they want to kill Americans, they would like to see the destruction of America.” Mr. Webb said Muslims did not like to talk about the few who embrace violence. “But if we continue to ignore these problems, they’ll never be answered,” he said.

The same sense of danger to Islam was expressed by an older member of the Boston community, Abdul Cader Asmal, 76, a retired physician and longtime leader in area mosques. He recalled watching Tarek Mehanna and Ahmad Abousamra grow up, and expressed puzzlement that one had ended up in prison and the other with ISIS.

“This is painful for us,” Dr. Asmal said. Islam, he said, must find a way to “excommunicate” extremists.

“If it doesn’t take a drastic stance against terrorism,” Dr. Asmal added, “its credibility as a force for good will be lost.”




《紐約時報》
To Reel In Crowds, a Museum Is Showing a Fake Painting

By WILLIAM GRIMESOCT. 31, 2014

The 19th-century artist James E. Buttersworth, although a titan in the field of marine art, cannot be described as famous. Prized for his exquisitely detailed portraits of racing yachts and clipper ships, he remains unknown to the general public and therefore has limited drawing power.

To overcome this obstacle, the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Va., hit on a novel solution for its new exhibition of his work: Toss in a forgery and challenge museum visitors to sniff it out from among the 34 genuine Buttersworth works.

About that ringer: Museums and forgeries are natural enemies, and officials at the Mariners’ Museum tiptoed warily around their idea for quite some time before committing to it.

“The museum couldn’t be seen spending money on this and putting it in the collection,” said Lyles Forbes, the museum’s chief curator and the organizer of “B Is for Buttersworth, F Is for Forgery: Solve a Maritime Mystery,” which opened on Saturday.

When it came down to it, he added, he was not even sure how to acquire a forgery.

At this point, help arrived from a man who has agreed to identify himself only as “a friend of the museum.” (Because his name appears as a lender on the wall text of the forged painting, providing it here might give away the secret to visitors).

The friend took on the assignment of securing a forged Buttersworth, which proved to be relatively easy, since, when it comes to bogus Buttersworths, nearly all roads lead to one man: Ken Perenyi.

For years, Mr. Perenyi studied and imitated the work of Buttersworth, turning a tidy profit by selling his paintings to unsuspecting dealers and collectors. He is not shy about this. Visitors who click on his website are greeted with the words “Welcome to America’s No. 1 Art Forger Website.” He has chronicled his buccaneering days of turning out bogus Buttersworths and Martin Johnson Heades, his mainstays, in “Caveat Emptor: The Secret Life of an American Art Forger,” published two years ago.

Mr. Perenyi now plies his trade openly and legally (though he is still on the F.B.I.'s radar). The friend of the museum acquired, through an intermediary, a genuine ersatz Buttersworth, from Mr. Perenyi’s stock on hand, for about 5 to 10 percent of the price that the painting might fetch if it were authentic.

A small Buttersworth in good condition might sell for $30,000, said Alan Granby, who, with Janice Hyland, runs Hyland Granby Antiques in Hyannis Port, Mass, which usually has several Buttersworths for sale. The much rarer large paintings, especially those depicting America’s Cup races, can go for more than $1 million. Mr. Perenyi said that his prices range from $5,000 to $150,000.

The museum has made a point of not mentioning Mr. Perenyi, who said he did not know until a reporter approached him that his work was in its current show. “We did not want to lend any legitimacy to the forger or be seen as promoting him in any way,” Mr. Forbes said.

On entering the exhibition, visitors approach a high-resolution digital image of “Magic and Gracie off Castle Garden,” an 1871 Butterworth that shows two yachts, sails taut in the wind, racing neck and neck in New York Harbor. On a nearby television screen, a photo of Buttersworth pops up, and “hot spots,” activated with the touch of a finger, explain the fine points: the signature, size, background features, sky and weather, seas and sea gulls, composition and meticulous detailing of the ships.

Visitors, prompted by clues in the wall texts, then try to identify the lone forgery. At two voting booths, they can test their suspicions by entering the number of the suspected forgery on touch screens that tell them whether they are right or wrong and offer to give them the correct answer. Then the honor system applies. Those in the know are asked not to give away the secret.

Mr. Forbes invited Colette Loll, the founder and director of the consulting firm Art Fraud Insights, to write wall texts explaining the difference between fakes and forgeries: Fakes replicate an existing work, while forgeries masquerade as new or unknown work.

Mr. Perenyi has been a burr under her saddle for quite some time. “He seems to have no remorse for diluting the body of work of an artist he professes to admire with all the forgeries he has inserted into the market,” she said. “If you fess up, but do not provide the specifics, the forgeries are still out there in circulation.”

Mr. Perenyi is more than happy to explain the techniques required to fake a Buttersworth, which he does crisply and authoritatively. If the circumstances were different, you could imagine him delivering a splendid lecture at the museum.

Over the telephone, he held forth enthusiastically on Buttersworth’s hallmarks: the favored New York settings; the play of light on clouds and water, reflecting the influence of the Luminist painters; the love of dramatic contrasts in the sky; and the painstaking attention to detail, with the stitching on canvas sails depicted in lines as fine as a human hair.

“Hardest of all is the unique way he painted water, " Mr. Perenyi said. “He did not follow the tried and true technique that British artists developed for waves and water. He rolls or twists his brush in his fingers as he pulls it along, to get ribbons of highlights.”

Close study and constant practice, Mr. Perenyi said, have made him the equal of his master. “If he could come back to life, he would shake my hand,” he said. “After all, I devoted 30 years to understanding him. He would say, ‘I would be proud to put my name on it myself.”

The forgery aside, the exhibition draws heavily on its own substantial collection of Buttersworths, augmented by loans from other museums and by a collection of 16 paintings recently donated by Janet Schaefer, a collector in Stonington, Conn.

All eyes will be searching for the non-Buttersworth, however. The painting returns to the friend of the museum when the exhibition closes on April 26, at which point, the friend said, “I’ll probably put it in my office as a conversation piece.”

As for Mr. Perenyi, he declared himself well pleased to be included in the Mariners’ Museum exhibition. " I take it as a great compliment,” he said, “and a testament to the museum’s good taste.”



《華爾街日報》
U.S. Is Awash in Glut of Scrap Materials
A strong dollar, slowing Chinese economy cut into demand abroad for salvaged metal and paper


Scrapper Bob ‘Hoop’ Hooper was making as much as $400 a day selling scrap just three years ago. ‘Now I’m doing $100 to $200,’ he says

James R. Hagerty and Bob Tita
Updated June 7, 2015

American companies have complained for the past year that the headwinds of a strong dollar and a slowing Chinese economy are hurting their earnings.

For sellers of scrap metal, used cardboard boxes, and other waste, those headwinds are more like a hurricane.

Waste has long been a major U.S. export, providing material to be melted in foreign steel mills or made into new paper products. But the strength of the dollar has made American waste pricier abroad, cutting demand in China, Turkey and other markets.

U.S. exports of scrap materials have fallen by 36% since peaking at $32.6 billion 2011. Prices of shredded scrap steel have plunged about 18% so far this year and are down 41% since early 2012, according data collected by the Platts unit of McGraw Hill Financial -0.45 The dollar is up about 17% since last July against a basket of major currencies compiled by the Federal Reserve.

That has been hard on the network of waste dealers and scrap gatherers who are the backbone of the industry.

Bob Hooper, who goes by Hoop, finds discarded metal on curbs and in dumpsters around Pittsburgh and carries it to scrapyards in a rusting Chevy pickup with a bungee cord to keep the driver’s door shut. He was making as much as $400 a day selling scrap just three years ago, he said. “Now I’m doing $100 to $200.”

Or less. On a recent day, he hauled in more than 1,000 pounds of scrap, including two discarded refrigerators, a water heater and a broken microwave buried in egg shells and other moist trash. After gasoline expenses, he netted about $80.

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Turkey, whose steel mills are big users of scrap, has been buying less from the U.S. and more from Russia, Ukraine and other places with weaker currencies. Meanwhile, U.S. steel production has fallen in response to more imports, so American producers are buying less scrap.

Demand for old paper and boxes also is down in the U.S. The average price for used corrugated cardboard has fallen 27% in the past year to $77 a ton, according to Pulp & Paper Week.

The recent labor dispute at West Coast ports disrupted exports, forcing buyers like China to find other sources and creating a glut in the U.S.

Waste and scrap remains a big business. Last year it accounted for 1.3% of U.S. exports, about the same as meat and poultry, and bigger than either corn or computers. The industry directly employs about 149,000 people, according to the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, a trade group. That doesn’t count self-employed people like Mr. Hooper.


On a recent day, Mr. Hooper hauled in more than 1,000 pounds of scrap, including two discarded refrigerators, a water heater and a broken microwave. After expenses, he netted about $80

After a steep drop in scrap prices earlier this year, “things seem to have stabilized a little,” said Joe Pickard, economist for the trade group. But the outlook hinges on a pickup in global manufacturing, which is currently sluggish.



When China was booming, scrap dealers focused heavily on that market. Ships that carried furniture and other household goods from China to California returned stuffed with old metal and boxes ready to be converted into new products. That traffic has slowed.

“Clearly, it’s been a great run for a number of years,” said Alan Dick, president of Los Angeles-based Alpert & Alpert Iron & Metal Inc. As demand from China wanes, he hopes Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia will buy more U.S. scrap. Combined they might provide enough demand to keep his 85-year-old company alive for another generation, he said.

Warren Rosenfeld, president of Calbag Metals Co., a scrap metals dealer in Portland, Ore., said he fears a long-term decline in the U.S. scrap industry. As people in China buy and wear out more cars and refrigerators, they create a larger supply of domestic scrap, he said, reducing the need for imports from the U.S.

Another worry for scrap-metals dealers is that new cars contain less steel these days as manufacturers reduce vehicle weights to improve fuel economy, said Randy Castriota, owner of Castriota Metals & Recycling in Pittsburgh. Cars also stay longer on the road—and out of the scrap pool.

Mr. Castriota, who employs about 30 people, had to lay off four a few months ago. A shortage of truck drivers has forced him to pay more to haul scrap to his customers. Insurance costs are up, too.

One beneficiary of lower scrap prices is Nucor Corp. -0.74 , the largest U.S. steelmaker, which makes most of its steel from melted scrap rather than iron ore. Chief Executive John Ferriola told investors recently that profit margins for scrap processors have been severely compressed, adding, “We expect to see some people not making it through this very difficult time.”

Nucor, he said, may take advantage of the downturn by acquiring distressed scrap-processing businesses. “We won’t be shy,” he said. “We’ll be at the table.”

Falling prices also threaten the paper-recycling business, some dealers said.

Joel Litman, co-owner of Texas Recycling/Surplus Inc. in Dallas, worries that “prices can get so low that you can’t even cover your processing costs.” Texas Recycling collects high-grade waste paper from various businesses and sells the material to dealers for use in tissue paper, paper towels and other paper products used by restaurants and the food service industry.

With the current glut, he said, “there’s just a lot of paper out there that cannot get consumed fast enough.”



《紐約時報》
U.S. Shifts Stance on Drug Pricing in Pacific Trade Pact Talks, Document Reveals
By JONATHAN WEISMANJUNE 10, 2015

WASHINGTON — Facing resistance from Pacific trading partners, the Obama administration is no longer demanding protection for pharmaceutical prices under the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, according to a newly leaked section of the proposed trade accord.

But American negotiators are still pressing participating governments to open the process that sets reimbursement rates for drugs and medical devices. Public health professionals, generic-drug makers and activists opposed to the trade deal, which is still being negotiated, contend that it will empower big pharmaceutical firms to command higher reimbursement rates in the United States and abroad, at the expense of consumers.

“It was very clear to everyone except the U.S. that the initial proposal wasn’t about transparency. It was about getting market access for the pharmaceutical industry by giving them greater access to and influence over decision-making processes around pricing and reimbursement,” said Deborah Gleeson, a lecturer at the School of Psychology and Public Health at La Trobe University in Australia. And even though the section, known as the transparency annex, has been toned down, she said, “I think it’s a shame that the annex is still being considered at all for the T.P.P.”

The annex, which covers pharmaceutical and medical devices, is the latest document obtained by The New York Times in collaboration with the watchdog group WikiLeaks, and it was released before the House vote on whether to give President Obama expanded powers to complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The Senate has already approved legislation giving the president trade promotion authority, or fast-track power that would allow him to complete trade deals without the threat of amendments or a filibuster in Congress. A House vote on final passage of the bill, now expected on Friday, appears extremely close.

The Pacific accord, would link countries stretching from Canada and Chile to Japan and Australia in a new set of trade rules that would cover 40 percent of the global economy.

Opponents of both the Pacific deal and the legislation to grant trade promotion authority have long targeted the pharmaceutical issue. Foreign governments and health care activists have accused pharmaceutical giants, mostly based in the United States, of protecting profits over public health, especially in poor countries where neither the government nor consumers can afford to pay rates anywhere close to those charged in wealthier nations.

That fight re-emerged in the Pacific trade negotiations, which involve countries with strong cost-containment policies, like New Zealand, as well as poor countries like Peru and Vietnam.

The agreement “will increase the cost of medicines worldwide, starting with the 12 countries that are negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” said Judit Rius Sanjuan, a lawyer at Doctors Without Borders, a humanitarian organization that provides medical care in more than 60 countries.

Drug companies, however, say they need to be able to charge fair prices to compensate for the billions of dollars and decades of research that go into their medicines.

Jay Taylor, vice president for international affairs for Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said penetrating the opaque process for getting a drug considered for a national health system, then listed as available and properly priced, is central to free trade for drug makers. “It is market access,” he said.

That is particularly true for the Pacific accord, he said, because one of the countries, New Zealand, has a powerful system for holding down drug costs — and keeping drug makers in the dark. New Zealand’s health system has been held up as a model for the Pacific region, a prospect the pharmaceutical industry does not relish.

“There are no clear timelines for review, no sense of what a complete dossier is to get a fair review,” Mr. Taylor said. “It’s a question of basic due process.”

Negotiators from the United States appear to be pushing a similar agenda in separate negotiations with the European Union, according to a copy of an internal European report viewed on Wednesday by The New York Times.

The report, dated May 8 and written by the European Commission, said of the status of talks with the United States on a planned Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, also known as T.T.I.P., “The U.S. reiterated its interest to include transparency provisions on pricing and reimbursement within the T.T.I.P. similar to the ones E.U. and U.S. have with Korea.”

The report was made available by a person who shared the information on the condition of anonymity.

The European Commission has said that the pharmaceutical aspects of trade talks with the United States focus mostly on simplifying inspections and making it easier to approve and develop new medicines, insisting that the “fear E.U. governments would lose their right to decide” drug costs was unfounded.

Pharmaceutical firms and their trade associations have filed by far more lobbying disclosure forms on the Pacific trade negotiations than any other industry, according to the watchdog Sunlight Foundation. More broadly, the pharmaceutical and health product industries have been the biggest spenders on lobbying, and drug company deal-making with the Obama administration and in Congress was instrumental in securing passage of the Affordable Care Act.

Public health professionals say pharmaceutical industry lobbying is meant to diminish the power of government health programs that trim reimbursement rates to global pharmaceutical giants. The newly leaked annex, dated Dec. 17, 2014, lists Medicare and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as falling under its strictures.

That may embolden critics.

“The leak is just the latest glaring example of why fast-tracking the T.P.P. would undermine the health of Americans and the other countries and cost our government more, all to the benefit of pharma’s profits,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch and one of the most prominent voices in the coalition working to scuttle trade promotion authority.

Officials at the United States trade representative’s office, while declining to comment on a leak they would not acknowledge, said rules in the Pacific accord would have no impact on the United States because Medicare already adhered to them. The trade representative’s office helped develop the proposals.

“Already, transparency and procedural fairness are integral parts of the U.S. legal system and as such are principles reflected in U.S. trade agreements,” the representative’s office said in a statement.

While the current draft may fall short of what pharmaceutical companies wanted, it also offers them new opportunities to challenge the decisions of trading partners on which drugs they will offer their citizens through government health care programs and the rates at which they will reimburse drug sellers.

A version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership annex that was leaked in 2011 made explicit reference to “competitive market-derived prices,” promising drug companies the chance to appeal rates they deemed insufficient. Those are gone, “a victory for the non-U.S. partners to some extent,” Ms. Gleeson said.

But Pacific accord negotiators appear ready to grant pharmaceutical and medical device makers more power to influence participating governments. The 12 countries involved, and any others that might join later, would have to disclose rules and guidelines for deciding which medical products would be made available through government programs and at what rate providers would be reimbursed.

In the United States, pharmaceutical companies and Medicare have fought for years over which drugs are listed for reimbursement, especially when Medicare lists generic drugs over name brands. While advocates of the trade deal, including Mr. Obama, say opening markets to competition should lower prices for consumers, generic-drug makers say the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership could raise costs instead.


Heather Bresch, the chief executive of Mylan, one of the largest generic-drug makers, said the brand-name pharmaceutical industry was “establishing, through U.S. trade policy, an international system designed to maximize its monopolies.”

By listing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the annex makes it clear the United States would not be immune to T.P.P. rules. Japan, Australia and New Zealand may not have drug companies as powerful as those in the United States, but under the accord, American subsidiaries in Pacific trade partners could use the accord’s dispute-resolution process against perceived violations by Medicare.

It also suggests that disputes over pharmaceutical listing would not be subject to government-to-government dispute resolution, the World Trade Organization and retaliatory tariffs.

Instead, trade lawyers say, disputes would most likely be resolved through the Investor-State Dispute Settlement process, which involves three-lawyer extrajudicial tribunals organized under rules set by the United Nations or the World Bank.

That could be significant for current Medicare practices, said Peter Maybarduk of Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines project, and also could hinder efforts to lower costs by changing federal law to allow the government to negotiate prices directly with drug makers.

Officials at the trade representative’s office say those concerns are unfounded.

“The transparency annex in T.P.P. is not subject to Investor-State Dispute Settlement, and nothing in its provisions will undermine our ability to pursue the best health care policy for Americans, including any future action on health care expenditures and cost containment,” a trade representative spokesman said.

世界都被中國山寨光了

以前見到過一些兒童讀物，翻譯的的占絕大多數。當時就覺得很失落。因素多了，國外教育領先，兒童教育效果是現成的，不買白不買，買了版權，出了書， 國內買的家庭多了。銷售量好，書商自然輕視國內作品，而國內大家都忙著賺錢，哪顧得寫有質量的兒童書籍啊，抄了都不聲明，買版權算是守規矩的了。

中國服務業貿易常常是逆差，娛樂產品（像電影、電視劇、電視節目、書籍之類）都在內，貢獻大了。中國政府還管製得嚴，話不讓隨便說，買些搞笑的，唱歌跳舞之類的，

2015.06.10
《鈦媒體》外國版權都被買光了，未來中國綜藝模式怎麽走？

日前，在上海電視節聯合世熙創立的首屆“中國模式日”論壇上，世界前十的綜藝模式製造和發行公司全部來華，與國內同行熱烈討論了如何才能製造有中國特色的、具有“互聯網+”的模式節目。

話題一，講中國故事

2014 年中國播出的節目模式總數達63檔，當年新引進節目模式就達35檔……據悉，這三四年間，由於瘋狂爭購外國模式，其價格在中國猛增了數十倍。對此，國內電 視人不無擔憂地認為，中國人幾乎用盡了國際電視業花30年研發的所有成功模式。引進已經走到盡頭，現在是認真考慮如何研發中國原創節目並推出模式的關口 了。如何將海外模式本土化成了重中之重。

浙江衛視俞杭英以《中國夢想秀》為例，認為中國版更重視故事性，概念上重視節目中的打動人的因 素。這些對於中國觀眾來說有吸引力的東西，他們在節目本土化改造中就會加強表現。此外，俞杭英以當下最熱的《奔跑吧，兄弟》為例，認為“中國元素”的加入 是一個很重要的原因。在“跑男”的節目遊戲設計中，他們會結合國人熟悉的元素，比如“老鷹抓小雞”，借此可以拉進與觀眾的距離。

在SMG節目模式研發博士後高級研發員馬忠君看來，

    目前階段，韓國模式之所以能在中國大行其道，是因為這些節目的本土化暗合了中國人的情感邏輯，家庭裏麵的事，社會裏麵的事，兒女情長的事。歐美這些模式也可能會有適合的方麵，隻不過我們在本土化歐美節目模式的過程中，目前還沒有找到一個比較好的方式。

BBCW 模式構思總監凱特·菲利普則表示，“在進行本土化時我們會參考當地的書籍、電視來做出相應調整，主持人、明星選擇等也會按照當地觀眾的口味來選擇，我們還 會邀請不同國家的製片人來英國交流經驗，所以購買模式不單單隻是一次交易，更是構建了一個國際性的關係網”。製作公司ALL3Media高級副總裁薩布麗 娜·德奎特則表示，不同的國家有不同的禁忌，比如在法國，醫療診斷是禁止上電視的，其公司製作的醫療節目就在法國做出了相應的調整。

有趣的是，搜狐視頻製作總監王一提到，很多模式商很愛惜自己的羽毛，很多“模式”進入中國，“本地化”是一個非常重要的問題，因為這還關係到如何說服原始的模式商，“讓他能夠允許我們對他的模式進行本地化”。搜狐影視版權總監馬可看來，

    歐美真人秀節目當中，我們看到更多的是放大衝突、放大殘酷性，用現在講的流行詞語就是“撕”。但中國模式本土化、內容本土化上受到韓國影響，相對展示的是更具戲劇性與和諧性，沒有太大的邏輯衝突、利益關係。

話題二，未來中國模式一定重素人，但現在不是

最 近幾天，真人秀限令傳聞頗多，尤其是對“明星富人俱樂部”這一現象，娛樂資本論就知道引發了不少保守主義者的反感。對此，俞杭英表示，目前還沒有接到正式 通知，跑男第二季節目依然在緊張的後期製作中。至於第三季跑男被傳將挪至明年上，她表示還沒有確定，“不過馬上就知道了。”

其實，國內真 人秀的明星費用一直被業界感慨過高，俞杭英說：“不止‘跑男’有這個現象，我們論壇中也說到很多大型戶外真人秀拿明星作為主要參與者，這已經是普遍現象 了。這個成本的確非常高，是不能承受之重，所有大型戶外真人秀製作者當然不希望這麽高額的成本中這一塊比例太高。但市場就是隻無形的手，有這個存在，那就 是很自然的事情。”

不過這一點在搜狐馬可看來，主要還是受到韓國節目模式製作的影響非常深刻：“韓國模式最突出的一個特點就是明星化，素人的節目下一步可能是一個趨勢，但現在來講市場空間不大。”

A&E 網絡中國區總經理艾德維娜·尼高也發現到，中國在做節目時明星很主要，“當前國外大多數真人秀的參加者都是素人，節目作用和收視率也都極好，但依托廣告掙 錢的中國電視台這麽做就不可，節目隻要有明星加盟廣告商才情願資助，這是中國市場和世界市場很大的不一樣”。

《年代秀》的模式方DRG現 在與深圳衛視協作了《加油吧新郎！》，原版中這檔以新郎為新娘打造定製婚禮的節目模式由素人參加，但中國版就加入了每期約請一位明星參加新郎的婚禮策劃並 擔任婚禮證婚人，DRG首席執行官傑瑞米·福克斯表明這是一個很有意思的學習過程，“任何模式到了一個全新的國家都是不可能直接照搬的，咱們的經曆是在中 國找到靠譜的協作夥伴，並習慣中國的明星需求”。

話題三，用戶參與感是互聯網的核心，但技術手段不是

每年當中國電視人去參加戛納的“Mip Formats”時，都會感受到歐洲電視人強烈的變革，尤其是今年更是將“互聯網+”玩到了極致。

確實，新媒體時代網絡技術和數字技術的發展，為電視節目帶來了無限發展空間，各種媒介的相互疊加與結合日益增強，這既是對電視節目的挑戰，也是對電視節目內容創新的促進。那麽，所謂的“互聯網+”，對節目模式意味著什麽？

還 是以歐洲為例，DoriMedia首席執行官Nadav Palti表示，他們很早就嗅出互聯網將會帶給人們生活方式的變化。08年Dori在以色列推出了一個產品，觀眾可以來選擇在電視節目裏麵發生什麽情況。 有點像“老大哥”節目的類似模式。24小時裏麵每個觀眾都可以通過互聯網、手機投票決定最後的結果和走向。而《New York》是專門犯罪題材電視劇，一共三季，每季50集。Dori 通過社交媒體、互聯網、facebook等讓受眾參與進來，觀眾甚至可以參與到警察對主角審訊的過程中，通過用戶在互聯網、遊戲等各方麵參與來提升活躍 度。從2011年起，公司就為互聯網量身定製節目內容。

而來自瑞典的DRG，則給出了不少數據：

    瑞典在過去的一年，免費電視台收視率已經下降了14%。

    瑞典每一個上網的網民，其在網上花的時間是電視的兩倍。

    互聯網的黃金時間主要集中在工作時間，從技術上來講，要對廣告做一些重新的安排。

目 前，電視熒屏還麵臨一個新的競爭對手：手機。其碎片化、社交化的特征，更為複雜和深刻地改變著青年一代。傳統媒體的使用是被動接受，網絡是主動搜索，而在 手機上的刷屏、分享取代了前兩者，需要以精煉的內容和互動體驗滿足受眾。Nadav Palti介紹了一個名為“自拍挑戰”的節目，兩組挑戰者需要完成一些高難度自拍任務，通過網絡回傳，其中一些拍攝動作可以由觀眾指定。這是一個能把數種 媒體相融合的節目模式，已經在數十個國家落地並獲得成功。

而馬可認為，要關注的不是“屏幕”，而是屏幕後麵的人。互動元素、技術手段都不是最核心的要素，依然“內容為王”，誰的節目能迅速匹配屏幕背後的用戶口味，誰就贏下這一城。

未來中國模式怎麽走？先去戛納定製，再集納資源建立模式工廠

近一年來，中國節目市場的火熱也引起了海外的關注，就連小娛這個電視邊緣人都差點去了戛納電視節。

從2013年起，戛納電視節還專門設立中國電視節目模式現狀與趨勢研討會，但據樂正傳媒研發與谘詢總監彭侃介紹，中國同行對於模式版權的引進逐漸謹慎，以學習交流為主，真正談成的模式引進少了。

“我 們已經將韓國模式買空了，下一步怎麽辦？”華策愛奇藝影視公司CEO杜昉提出，“中國電視人不缺創意，但目前的市場和平台隻認引進模式，這需要從政策層麵 引導。”馬忠君則認為，世熙傳媒在上海節首創“模式日”活動是一種風向標，“過去中國電視人去戛納買模式，完全是買手的感覺，這兩年已經慢慢發展成定製方 向，去戛納商談資源。其實，離中國電視市場最近的地方不在國外，上海電視節應該成為中國電視人建立自己模式工廠的開端。”

此外，美國 A+E Networks 副總裁和中國區總經理區詠卿則主張，不僅模式進入中國時要進行本土化，而且從中國走出去時也需要做一些本土化，“中國的模式在情感上麵比較重視”。CJ E&M內容部部長黃振宇表示，他正在引進一檔中國節目，但是把他移到韓國本土後，他也會進行本土化，將節目焦點置換。




《Stratfor Global Intelligence》
Decade Forecast: 2015-2025
February 23, 2015

This is the fifth Decade Forecast published by Stratfor. Every five years since 1996 (1996, 2000, 2005, 2010 and now, 2015) Stratfor has produced a rolling forecast. Overall, we are proud of our efforts. We predicted the inability of Europe to survive economic crises, China's decline and the course of the U.S.-jihadist war. We also made some errors. We did not anticipate 9/11, and more important, we did not anticipate the scope of the American response. But in 2005 we did forecast the difficulty the United States would face and the need for the United States to withdraw from its military engagements in the Islamic world. We predicted China's weakness too early, but we saw that weakness when others were seeing the emergence of an economy larger than that of the United States. Above all, we have consistently forecast the enduring power of the United States. This is not a forecast rooted in patriotism or jingoism. It derives from our model that continues to view the United States as the pre-eminent power.

We do not forecast everything. We focus on the major trends and tendencies in the world. Thus, we see below some predictions from our 2010 Decade Forecast:

    We see the U.S.-jihadist war subsiding. This does not mean that Islamist militancy will be eliminated. Attempts at attacks will continue, and some will succeed. However, the two major wars in the region will have dramatically subsided if not concluded by 2020. We also see the Iranian situation having been brought under control. Whether this will be by military action and isolation of Iran or by a political arrangement with the current or a successor regime is unclear but irrelevant to the broader geopolitical issue. Iran will be contained, as it simply does not have the underlying power to be a major player in the region beyond its immediate horizons.

    The diversity of systems and demographics that is Europe will put the European Union's institutions under severe strain. We suspect the institutions will survive. We doubt that they will work very effectively. The main political tendency will be away from multinational solutions to a greater nationalism driven by divergent and diverging economic, social and cultural forces. The elites that have crafted the European Union will find themselves under increasing pressure from the broader population. The tension between economic interests and cultural stability will define Europe. Consequently, inter-European relations will be increasingly unpredictable and unstable.

    Russia will spend the 2010s seeking to secure itself before the demographic decline really hits. It will do this by trying to move from raw commodity exports to process commodity exports, moving up the value chain to fortify its economy while its demographics still allow it. Russia will also seek to reintegrate the former Soviet republics into some coherent entity in order to delay its demographic problems, expand its market and above all reabsorb some territorial buffers. Russia sees itself as under the gun, and therefore is in a hurry. This will cause it to appear more aggressive and dangerous than it is in the long run. However, in the 2010s, Russia's actions will cause substantial anxiety in its neighbors, both in terms of national security and its rapidly shifting economic policies.

    The states most concerned — and affected — will be the former satellite states of Central Europe. Russia's primary concern remains the North European Plain, the traditional invasion route into Russia. This focus will magnify as Europe becomes more unpredictable politically. Russian pressure on Central Europe will not be overwhelming military pressure, but Central European psyches are finely tuned to threats. We believe this constant and growing pressure will stimulate Central European economic, social and military development.

    China's economy, like the economies of Japan and other East Asian states before it, will reduce its rate of growth dramatically in order to calibrate growth with the rate of return on capital and to bring its financial system into balance. To do this, it will have to deal with the resulting social and political tensions.

    From the American point of view, the 2010s will continue the long-term increase in economic and military power that began more than a century ago. The United States remains the overwhelming — but not omnipotent — military power in the world, and produces 25 percent of the world's wealth each year.

The Decade Ahead

The world has been restructuring itself since 2008, when Russia invaded Georgia and the subprime financial crisis struck. Three patterns have emerged. First, the European Union entered a crisis that it could not solve and that has increased in intensity. We predict that the European Union will never return to its previous unity, and if it survives it will operate in a more limited and fragmented way in the next decade. We do not expect the free trade zone to continue to operate without increasing protectionism. We expect Germany to suffer severe economic reversals in the next decade and Poland to increase its regional power as a result.

The current confrontation with Russia over Ukraine will remain a centerpiece of the international system over the next few years, but we do not think the Russian Federation can exist in its current form for the entire decade. Its overwhelming dependence on energy exports and the unreliability of expectations on pricing make it impossible for Moscow to sustain its institutional relations across the wide swathe of the Russian Federation. We expect Moscow's authority to weaken substantially, leading to the formal and informal fragmentation of Russia. The security of Russia's nuclear arsenal will become a prime concern as this process accelerates later in the decade.

We have entered a period in which the decline of the nation-states created by Europe in North Africa and the Middle East is accelerating. Power is no longer held by the state in many countries, having devolved to armed factions that can neither defeat others nor be defeated. This has initiated a period of intense internal fighting. The United States is prepared to mitigate the situation with air power and limited forces on the ground but will not be able or willing to impose a settlement. Turkey, whose southern border is made vulnerable by this fighting, will be slowly drawn into the fighting. By the end of this decade, Turkey will emerge as the major regional power, and Turkish-Iranian competition will increase as a result.

China has completed its cycle as a high-growth, low-wage country and has entered a new phase that is the new normal. This phase includes much slower growth and an increasingly powerful dictatorship to contain the divergent forces created by slow growth. China will continue to be a major economic force but will not be the dynamic engine of global growth it once was. That role will be taken by a new group of highly dispersed countries we call the Post-China 16, which includes much of Southeast Asia, East Africa and parts of Latin America. China will not be an aggressive military force either. Japan remains the most likely contender for the dominant position in East Asia, both because of its geography and because of its needs as a massive importer.

The United States will continue to be the major economic, political and military power in the world but will be less engaged than in the past. Its low rate of exports, its increasing energy self-reliance and its experiences over the last decade will cause it to be increasingly cautious about economic and military involvement in the world. It has learned what happens to heavy exporters when customers cannot or will not buy their products. It has learned the limits of power in trying to pacify hostile countries. It has learned that North America is an arena in which it can prosper with selective engagements elsewhere. It will face major strategic threats with proportional power, but it will not serve the role of first responder as it has in recent years.

It will be a disorderly world, with a changing of the guard in many regions. The one constant will be the continued and maturing power of the United States — a power that will be much less visible and that will be utilized far less in the next decade.

Europe

The European Union will be unable to solve its fundamental problem, which is not the eurozone, but the free trade zone. Germany is the center of gravity of the European Union; it exports more than 50 percent of its GDP, and half of that goes to other EU countries. Germany has created a productive capability that vastly outstrips its ability to consume, even if the domestic economy were stimulated. It depends on these exports to maintain economic growth, full employment and social stability. The European Union's structures — including the pricing of the euro and many European regulations — are designed to facilitate this export dependency.

This has already fragmented Europe into at least two parts. Mediterranean Europe and countries such as Germany and Austria have completely different behavioral patterns and needs. No single policy can suit all of Europe. This has been the core problem from the beginning, but it has now reached an extreme point. What benefits one part of Europe harms another.

Nationalism has already risen significantly. Compounding this is the Ukrainian crisis and Eastern European countries' focus on the perceived threat from Russia. Eastern Europe's concern about Russia creates yet another Europe — four, total, if we separate the United Kingdom and Scandinavia from the rest of Europe. Considered with the rise of Euroskeptic parties on the right and left, the growing delegitimation of mainstream parties and the surging popularity of separatist parties within European countries, the fragmentation and nationalism that we forecast in 2005, and before, is clearly evident.

These trends will continue. The European Union might survive in some sense, but European economic, political and military relations will be governed primarily by bilateral or limited multilateral relationships that will be small in scope and not binding. Some states might maintain a residual membership in a highly modified European Union, but this will not define Europe.

What will define Europe in the next decade is the re-emergence of the nation-state as the primary political vehicle of the continent. Indeed the number of nation-states will likely increase as various movements favoring secession, or the dissolution of states into constituent parts, increase their power. This will be particularly noticeable during the next few years, as economic and political pressures intensify amid Europe's crisis.

Germany has emerged from this mass of nation-states as the most economically and politically influential. Yet Germany is also extremely vulnerable. It is the world's fourth-largest economic power, but it has achieved that status by depending on exports. Export powers have a built-in vulnerability: They depend on their customers' desire and ability to buy their products. In other words, Germany's economy is hostage to the economic well-being and competitive environment in which it operates.

There are multiple forces working against Germany in this regard. First, Europe's increasing nationalism will lead to protectionist capital and labor markets. Weaker countries are likely to adopt various sorts of capital controls, while stronger countries will limit the movement of foreigners — including the citizens of other EU countries — across their borders. We forecast that existing protectionist policies inside the European Union, particularly on agriculture, will be supplemented in coming years by trade barriers created by the weaker Southern European economies that need to rebuild their economic base after the current depression. On a global basis, we can expect European exports to face increased competition and highly variable demand in the uncertain environment. Therefore, our forecast is that Germany will begin an extended economic decline that will lead to a domestic social and political crisis and that will reduce Germany's influence in Europe during the next 10 years.

At the center of economic growth and increasing political influence will be Poland. Poland has maintained one of the most impressive growth profiles outside of Germany and Austria. In addition, though its population is likely to contract, the contraction will most probably be far less than in other European countries. As Germany undergoes wrenching shifts in economy and population, Poland will diversify its own trade relationships to emerge as the dominant power on the strategic Northern European Plain. Moreover, we expect Poland to be the leader of an anti-Russia coalition that would, significantly, include Romania during the first half of this decade. In the second half of the decade, this alliance will play a major role in reshaping the Russian borderlands and retrieving lost territories through informal and formal means. Eventually as Moscow weakens, this alliance will become the dominant influence not only in Belarus and Ukraine, but also farther east. This will further enhance Poland's and its allies' economic and political position.

Poland will benefit from having a strategic partnership with the United States. Whenever a leading global power enters into a relationship with a strategic partner, it is in the global power's interest to make the partner as economically vigorous as possible, both to stabilize its society and to make it capable of building a military force. Poland will be in that position with the United States, as will Romania. Washington has made its interest in the region obvious.

Russia

It is unlikely that the Russian Federation will survive in its current form. Russia's failure to transform its energy revenue into a self-sustaining economy makes it vulnerable to price fluctuations. It has no defense against these market forces. Given the organization of the federation, with revenue flowing to Moscow before being distributed directly or via regional governments, the flow of resources will also vary dramatically. This will lead to a repeat of the Soviet Union's experience in the 1980s and Russia's in the 1990s, in which Moscow's ability to support the national infrastructure declined. In this case, it will cause regions to fend for themselves by forming informal and formal autonomous entities. The economic ties binding the Russian periphery to Moscow will fray.

Historically, the Russians solved such problems via the secret police — the KGB and its successor, the Federal Security Services (FSB). But just as in the 1980s, the secret police will not be able to contain the centrifugal forces pulling regions away from Moscow this decade. In this case, the FSB's power is weakened by its leadership's involvement in the national economy. As the economy falters, so does the FSB's strength. Without the FSB inspiring genuine terror, the fragmentation of the Russian Federation will not be preventable.

To Russia's west, Poland, Hungary and Romania will seek to recover regions lost to the Russians at various points. They will work to bring Belarus and Ukraine into this fold. In the south, the Russians' ability to continue controlling the North Caucasus will evaporate, and Central Asia will destabilize. In the northwest, the Karelian region will seek to rejoin Finland. In the Far East, the maritime regions more closely linked to China, Japan and the United States than to Moscow will move independently. Other areas outside of Moscow will not necessarily seek autonomy but will have it thrust upon them. This is the point: There will not be an uprising against Moscow, but Moscow's withering ability to support and control the Russian Federation will leave a vacuum. What will exist in this vacuum will be the individual fragments of the Russian Federation.

This will create the greatest crisis of the next decade. Russia is the site of a massive nuclear strike force distributed throughout the hinterlands. The decline of Moscow's power will open the question of who controls those missiles and how their non-use can be guaranteed. This will be a major test for the United States. Washington is the only power able to address the issue, but it will not be able to seize control of the vast numbers of sites militarily and guarantee that no missile is fired in the process. The United States will either have to invent a military solution that is difficult to conceive of now, accept the threat of rogue launches, or try to create a stable and economically viable government in the regions involved to neutralize the missiles over time. It is difficult to imagine how this problem will play out. However, given our forecast on the fragmentation of Russia, it follows that this issue will have to be addressed, likely in the next decade.

The issue in the first half of the decade will be how far the alliance stretching between the Baltic and Black seas will extend. Logically, it should reach Azerbaijan and the Caspian Sea. Whether it does depends on what we have forecast for the Middle East and Turkey.

The Middle East and North Africa

The Middle East — particularly the area between the Levant and Iran, along with North Africa — is experiencing national breakdowns. By this we mean that the nation-states established by European powers in the 19th and 20th centuries are collapsing into their constituent factions defined by kinship, religion or shifting economic interests. In countries like Libya, Syria and Iraq, we have seen the devolution of the nation-state into factions that war on each other and that cross the increasingly obsolete borders of countries.

This process follows the model of Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s, when the central government ceased to function and power devolved to warring factions. The key factions could not defeat the others, nor could they themselves be defeated. They were manipulated and supported from the outside, as well as self-supporting. The struggle among these factions erupted into a civil war — one that has quieted but not ended. As power vacuums persist throughout the region, jihadist groups will find space to operate but will be contained in the end by their internal divisions.

This situation cannot be suppressed by outside forces. The amount of force required and the length of deployment would outstrip the capacity of the United States, even if dramatically expanded. Given the situation in other parts of the world, particularly in Russia, the United States can no longer focus exclusively on this region.

At the same time, this evolution, particularly in the Arab states south of Turkey, represents a threat to regional stability. The United States will act to mitigate the threat of particular factions, which will change over time, through the use of limited force. But the United States will not deploy multidivisional forces to the region. At this point, most countries in the area still expect the United States to act as the decisive force even though they witnessed the United States fail in this role in the past decade. Nevertheless, expectations shift more slowly than reality.

As the reality sinks in, it will emerge that, because of its location, only one country has an overriding interest in stabilizing Syria and Iraq, is able to act broadly — again because of its location — and has the means to at least achieve limited success in the region. That country is Turkey. At this point, Turkey is surrounded by conflicts in the Arab world, in the Caucasus and in the Black Sea Basin. But Turkey has avoided taking risks so far.

Turkey will continue to need U.S. involvement for political and military reasons. The United States will oblige, but there will be a price: participation in the containment of Russia. The United States does not expect Turkey to assume a war-fighting role and does not intend one for itself. It does, however, want a degree of cooperation in managing the Black Sea. Turkey will not be ready for a completely independent policy in the Middle East and will pay the price for a U.S. relationship. That price will open the path to extending the containment line to Georgia and Azerbaijan.

We expect the instability in the Arab world to continue through the decade. We also expect Turkey to be drawn in to the south, inasmuch as its fears of fighting so close to its border — and the political outcomes of that fighting — will compel it to get involved. It will intervene as little as possible and as slowly as possible, but it will intervene, and its intervention will eventually increase in size and breadth. Whatever its reluctance, Turkey cannot withstand years of chaos across its border, and there will be no other country to carry the burden. Iran is not in a position geographically or militarily to perform this function, nor is Saudi Arabia. Turkey is likely to try to build shifting coalitions ultimately reaching into North Africa to stabilize the situation. Turkish-Iranian competition will grow with time, but Turkey will keep its options open to work with both Iran and Saudi Arabia as needed. Whatever the dynamic, Turkey will be at the center of it.

This will not be the only region drawing Turkey's attention. As Russia weakens, European influence will begin inching eastward into areas where Turkey has historical interests, such as the northern shore of the Black Sea. We can foresee Turkey projecting its power northward certainly commercially and politically but also potentially in some measured military way. Moreover, as the European Union fragments and individual economies weaken or some nations become oriented toward the East, Turkey will increase its presence in the Balkans as the only remaining power able to do so.

Before this can happen, Turkey must find a domestic political balance. It is both a secular and Muslim country. The current government has attempted to bridge the gap, but in many ways it has tilted away from the secularists, of whom there are many. A new government will certainly emerge over the coming years. This is a permanent fault line in contemporary Turkey. Like many countries, its power will expand in the midst of political uncertainty. Alongside this internal political conflict, the military, intelligence and diplomatic service will need to evolve in size and function during the coming decade. That said, we expect to see an acceleration of Turkey's emergence as a major regional power in the next 10 years.

East Asia

China has ceased to be a high-growth, low-wage economy. As China's economy slows, the process of creating and organizing an economic infrastructure to employ low-wage workers will be incremental. What can be done quickly in a port city takes much longer in the interior. Therefore, China has normalized its economy, as Japan did before it, and as Taiwan and South Korea did in 1997. All massive expansions climax, and the operations of the economies shift.

The problem for China in the next decade are the political and social consequences of that shift. The coastal region has been built on high growth rates and close ties with European and American consumers. As these decline, political and social challenges emerge. At the same time, the expectation that the interior — beyond parts of the more urbanized Yangtze River Delta — will grow as rapidly as the coast is being dashed. The problem for the next decade will be containing these difficulties.

Beijing's growing dictatorial tendencies and an anti-corruption campaign, which is actually Beijing's assertion of its power over all of China, provide an outline of what China would like to see in the next decade. China is following a hybrid path that will centralize political and economic powers, assert Party primacy over the military, and consolidate previously fragmented industries like coal and steel amid the gradual and tepid implementation of market-oriented reforms in state-owned enterprises and in the banking sector. It is highly likely that a dictatorial state coupled with more modest economic expectations will result. However, there is a less likely but still conceivable outcome in which political interests along the coast rebel against Beijing's policy of transferring wealth to the interior to contain political unrest. This is not an unknown pattern in China, and, though we do not see this as the most likely course, it should be kept in mind. Our forecast is the imposition of a communist dictatorship, a high degree of economic and political centralization and increased nationalism.

China cannot easily turn nationalism into active aggression. China's geography makes such actions on land difficult, if not impossible. The only exception might be an attempt to take control of Russia's maritime interests if we are correct and Russia fragments. Here, Japan likely would challenge China. China is building a large number of ships but has little experience in naval warfare and lacks the experienced fleet commanders needed to challenge more experienced navies, including the U.S. Navy.

Japan has the resources to build a significantly larger navy and a more substantial naval tradition. In addition, Japan is heavily dependent on imports of raw materials from Southeast Asia and the Persian Gulf. Right now it depends on the United States to guarantee access. But given that we are forecasting more cautious U.S. involvement in foreign ventures and that the United States is not dependent on imports, the reliability of the United States is in question. Therefore, the Japanese will increase their naval power in the coming years.

Fighting over the minor islands producing low-cost and unprofitable energy will not be the primary issue in the region. Rather, an old three-player game will emerge. Russia, the declining power, will increasingly lose the ability to protect its maritime interests. The Chinese and the Japanese will both be interested in acquiring these and in preventing each other from having them. We forecast this as the central, unsettled issue in the region as Russia declines and Sino-Japanese competition increases.

Post-China Manufacturing Hubs


International capitalism requires a low-wage, high-growth region for high rewards on risk capital. In the 1880s it was the United States, for example. China was the most recent region, replacing Japan. No one country can replace China, but we have noted 16 countries with a total population of about 1.15 billion people where entry-level manufacturing has gone after leaving China.

To identify these countries, we looked at three industries. The first was garment manufacturing, particularly low-end and of garment parts like coat linings. Second was the manufacturing of footwear. Third, we looked at cellphone assembly. These industries require low capital investment, and manufacturers move their facilities around rapidly to take advantage of low wages. Industries of this sort, such as inexpensive toys in Japan, served as a foundation for manufacturing sectors to evolve into broader low-wage products in high demand. The workforce, frequently women at first, expanded dramatically as new low-wage industries moved in. The wages were low on a global scale but very attractive on the local scale.

Like China during its takeoff in the late 1970s, these countries tend to be politically unstable, with uncertain rule of law, poor infrastructure and all of the risks advanced industrial businesses try to avoid. But companies from other countries excel in these environments and have built business models around this.

The map of these countries shows that they are concentrated in the Indian Ocean Basin. Another way to look at it is that these are the less developed countries (or regions) in Asia, East Africa and Latin America. Our forecast is that in this next decade, many of these countries — and perhaps some not identified — will collectively take on the role that China had in the 1980s. This would mean that by the end of the decade, they would be entering an intensifying period of growth in a much wider array of products. Mexico, whose economy exhibits potential in both low-end manufacturing and higher-end industry in a cost-competitive environment, stands to benefit substantially from its northern neighbor's investment and healthy level of consumption.

The United States

The United States continues to make up more than 22 percent of the world's economy. It continues to dominate the world's oceans and has the only significant intercontinental military force. Since 1880, it has been on an uninterrupted expansion of economy and power. Even the Great Depression, in retrospect, is a minor blip. This expansion of power is at the center of the international system, and our forecast is that it will continue unabated.

The greatest advantage the United States has is its insularity. It exports only 9 percent of its GDP, and about 40 percent of that goes to Canada and Mexico. Only about 5 percent of its GDP is exposed to the vagaries of global consumption. Thus, as the uncertainties of Europe, Russia and China mount, even if the United States lost half its exports — an extraordinary amount — it would not be an unmanageable problem.

The United States is also insulated from import constraints. Unlike in 1973, when the Arab oil embargo massively disrupted the U.S. economy, the United States has emerged as a significant energy producer. Although it must import some minerals from outside NAFTA, and it prefers to import some industrial products, it can readily manage without these. This is particularly true as industrial production is increasing in the United States and in Mexico in response to the increasing costs in China and elsewhere.

The Americans also have benefited from global crises. The United States is a haven for global capital, and as capital flight has taken hold of China, Europe and Russia, that money has flowed into the United States, reducing interest rates and buoying equity markets. Therefore, though there is exposure to the banking crisis in Europe, it is nowhere near as substantial as it might have been a decade ago, and capital inflows counterbalance that exposure. As for the perennial fear that China will withdraw its money from American markets, that will happen slowly anyway as China's growth slows and internal investment increases. But a sudden withdrawal is impossible. There is nowhere else to invest money. Certainly the next decade will see fluctuations in U.S. economic growth and markets, but the United Stares remains the stable heart of the international system.

At the same time, the Americans have become less dependent on that system and have encountered many difficulties in managing — and particularly, in pacifying — that system. The United States will become more selective in assuming responsibilities politically in the next decade, and even more selective in military interventions.

For a century, the United States has been concerned about the emergence of a hegemon in Europe, and in particular of either an accommodation between Germany and Russia or a conquest of one by the other. That combination, more than any other, might be able to muster a force — between German capital and technology and Russian resources and manpower — capable of threatening American interests. Therefore, in World War I, World War II and the Cold War, the United States was instrumental in preventing this from occurring.

In the world wars, the United States came in late, and though it absorbed fewer casualties than other countries, it nevertheless suffered more than was comfortable for it. In the Cold War, the United States intervened early and, at least in Europe, had no casualties. Based on this, the United States has a core policy imperative that is almost automatic: When a potential European hegemon arises, the United States will act early, as in the Cold War, in building alliances and deploying sufficient force in primarily defensive positions.

This is happening now against Russia. Though we forecast the decline of Russia, Russia poses danger in the short term, particularly with its back against the wall economically. Moreover, whatever we forecast, the United States cannot be certain that Russia will decline and indeed, if it launches a successful expansionary policy (politically, economically or militarily), it may not decline. Therefore, the United States will take measures according to its imperative. It will try to build an alliance system outside of NATO, from the Baltics to Bulgaria, encompassing as many nations as possible. It will try to involve Turkey in the alliance and have it reach to Azerbaijan. It will deploy forces, proportional to the threat, in those countries.

This will be the primary focus in the early part of the decade. In the second part, Washington will focus on trying to assure that Russia's decline does not result in nuclear disaster. The United States will not become involved in trying to solve Europe's problems, it will not have a war with China, and its involvement in the Middle East will be minimal. It will conduct global counterterrorism operations but will do so with the full knowledge that those operations will be only partially effective at best.

The Americans will have an emerging problem. The United States has 50-year cycles that end with significant economic or social problems. One cycle began in 1932 with the election of Franklin Roosevelt and ended with the presidency of Jimmy Carter. It began with a need to rebuild demand for products from idle factories and ended in vast overconsumption, underinvestment and with double-digit inflation and unemployment. Ronald Reagan's presidency laid the groundwork for restructuring American industry through a change in the tax code and by shifting the focus from the urban industrial worker to the suburban professional and entrepreneur.

We are now about 15 years from the end of this cycle, and the next crisis will make itself felt in the second half of the next decade. It is already visible. It is the crisis of the middle class. The problem is not inequality; the problem is the ability of the middle class to live a middle class life. Currently, the median household income in the United States is about $50,000. Depending on the state you live in, this is actually about $40,000. That allows the literal middle to buy a modest home and live frugally outside major metropolitan areas. For the lower middle class, the 25th percentile, this is almost impossible.

There are two causes. One is the rise of the single-parent household. Having two households is twice as expensive. The other problem is that the same incentives that led to the badly needed re-engineering of the American corporation and vastly improved productivity also limited job security and income for the middle class. This is not a political crisis yet. It will become one toward the end of the next decade, but it will not be addressed until the elections of 2028 and 2032. It is a normal, cyclical crisis, but painful nonetheless.

In Context

There is no decade without pain, and even in the most perfect of times, there is suffering. The crises that we expect in the next decade are far from the worst seen in the past century, and they are no worse than those we will see in the next. There is always the expectation that what we know now as reality will define the future. There is also the belief that our pain now is the most extraordinary anguish that has ever been. This is simply narcissism. What we have now will always change — usually sooner than we believe possible. The pains we are having now are merely the normal pains of being human. This is not a comfort, but a reality, and it is in this context that this decade forecast should be read.